


Dear Mr. President

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, count the number of west wing references in this fic, count them anakin, some OCs who are really just West Wing Characters I renamed lbr here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2020-09-06 18:57:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 89,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20296375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Dr. Dameron shifts and slides a manilla folder across the desk to her.  “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d let you keep the folder.  I hope you’ll understand why I can’t do that this time around.”She opens it and stares.She stares and stares and stares.Dr. Dameron has to be kidding.  There have to be hidden cameras here, this has to be some elaborate prank.  That’s why it’s him here and not Dr. Wexley—that was his name.  Dr. Wexley.But instead of getting to her feet and tossing her hair and saying he was cruel for playing with her heart like this, all she does is ask, blankly, “So...Ben Solo is my soulmate?  Our new president is my…”She swallows.And Dr. Dameron nods.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1) reylo_prompts on twitter is a menace  
2) queenbumble is a menace  
3) ytc is a menace enabler  
3) jeeno is an menace enabler (and kind beta)  
4) i have no one to blame but myself
> 
> ordinarily, i would never post the first chapter of a fic before the entire fic is written, but that's what i'm doing here. what this means is i will **not** post chapter 2 until everything is written. that might be later this week; it might not be for a few months depending on how long the fic ends up being. i'm sorry if the wait is a long time--as i say, usually i don't do this for a reason.
> 
> but it's a lovely thunderstormy sunday morning and i figured why the fuck not, especially because of the above-mentioned menaces/enablers.

“You’re still covering my shift today?” Rey asks before she leaves the house. She’s not wearing her diner uniform, not wearing her greasy coveralls. She’s wearing what could pass for a nice blouse in Jakku and denim shorts. On Taungsdays, she’s usually at the diner, but not today. Today, she has her followup.

“Yeah,” Finn calls. “Unless you show up and want it after.”

“Yeah,” Rey says. “I’ll see how it goes.” She does her best to sound cheerful. She really does.

“Hey,” Finn says, grabbing her arm as she passes him on her way out of the house. His brown eyes are gentle, his face soft. “Deep breaths.”

Of course, her trying her best to sound cheerful never works on Finn.

She takes one, in for three, out for three.

“And no matter what they say, we love you,” he says firmly.

“Yeah,” she replies. She knows it’s true—she does. But sometimes when Finn says it, this gnawing feeling fills her gut, and this bitter thought invades her mind. _Easy for you to say. You found your soulmate. You didn’t have to pinch pennies for four years to afford the testing._

And then guilt spikes—every time—because it’s not that she doesn’t want Finn to have a soulmate—it’s that she wants one of her own too. It’s not his fault that he found Rose—or rather, Rose found him. And it wasn’t as though Finn didn’t have his fair share of hospital bills he was paying off, either.

“See you later. Hope the diner’s not too busy,” and she goes.

-

Rey hates hospitals. She hates them. Hospitals are only for bad things.

Hospitals are for when they find you on the street, starving and alone and bring you in and ask you who your parents are and you tell them but your parents never come to get you.

Hospitals are for when Maz’s breathing is too weak, her grip is failing in your hand, and everything gets blurry because there are tears in your eyes.

Hospitals are for when Finn gets in a transport accident and he’s in hours of surgery and Rose is sitting there numb next to you and you don’t have a right to be numb —he’s not your soulmate but you can’t stop staring at the door that he’d disappeared through and wondering if—should he die, your life will end too.

She’s sitting in a waiting area. She’d taken the test a week ago, and they’d processed it and now she’s waiting for results.

Not everyone has a soulmate. And Rey sort of assumes she doesn’t, because she’s never had that frisson, that moment of connection, and everyone says that having a soulmate means you get thrown across your soulmate’s path somehow. Her eyes haven’t changed colors to match someone else’s, and no one else’s eyes have changed colors to match hers.

It’ll be fine if she doesn’t have a soulmate—really. It’ll be fine. She’ll still have Finn, she’ll always have Finn. He’s her best friend in the world, her thick-as-thieves friend, her brother in arms. But she just needs to know. (And if she does, maybe they’ll be in the record bank, maybe they’ll have left a DNA swab just in case and then she won’t be alone anymore.)

“Ms. Johnson?” comes a man’s voice and Rey looks up. He’s tall, with curling dark hair, and a white lab coat. “I’m Dr. Dameron.”

“Nice to meet you,” Rey says, getting to her feet slowly. She doesn’t comment on the fact that Dr. Dameron is not the same doctor whose name she’s already forgotten who had taken her samples. She assumes something about different shifts. 

He leads her into the same cluttered office space she’d come to last time and sits down behind the desk.

“So,” he says. “We have your test results.”

“Yes,” she says.

“Ordinarily we do this by phone,” he says slowly and Rey feels her stomach tighten as he continues. “Ordinarily, when someone comes in for testing, they...aren’t predisposed.”

“Am I to take it that I am then?” she asks, forcing her voice not to be small, forcing herself to be brave and ask the question whose answer could well crush her.

Dr. Dameron shifts and slides a manilla folder across the desk to her. “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d let you keep the folder. I hope you’ll understand why I can’t do that this time around.”

She opens it and stares.

She stares and stares and stares.

Dr. Dameron has to be kidding. There have to be hidden cameras here, this has to be some elaborate prank. That’s why it’s him here and not Dr. Wexley—that was his name. Dr. Wexley.

But instead of getting to her feet and tossing her hair and saying he was cruel for playing with her heart like this, all she does is ask, blankly, “So...Ben Solo is my soulmate? Our new president is my…”

She swallows.

And Dr. Dameron nods.

-

_The Department of Health announced earlier today that President Solo’s soulmate had been identified using the Soulmate Testing Database. _

_Rey Johnson, 27, a mechanic and waitress from Jakku will be flying into Coruscant today to meet with the President for the first time._

_The Glass Palace has yet to make an official statement beyond stating that Ms. Johnson will be coming, instead asking for the nation’s patience while President Solo and Ms. Johnson work to establish a relationship, and give them the privacy they deserve. _

_Unkar Plutt, Ms. Johnson’s Manager at Plutt’s Body Parts in Jakku—_

Rey puts the newspaper down.

Her heart is in her throat and her hands are trembling. The shuttle is very nice. Very nice. The seats are leather and squashy and a stewardess comes by every four seconds asking her if she wants some champagne.

Rey shakes her head every time. She feels like she’s going to be sick. She’s wearing the nicest dress she owns and it’s not presidential material in the slightest. She’d gotten it on _sale_ at the Credit Store. But at least it’s not covered in grease.

She hadn’t had enough money in her bank account to get anything nicer.

For the fourth time since she’d gotten on the shuttle, she opens the letter that the Chief of Staff—a soft spoken man named Dopheld Mitaka—had handed her when Airforce Three (she hadn’t known there even was an Airforce Three) had landed in her tiny town. It is typed on the presidential letterhead and there’s a printed—not written—signature at the bottom. “The President isn’t in Coruscant at the moment,” Mitaka had told her. “But he asked that I give you this.”

_Dear Rey,_

_I am sorry I cannot be there to pick you up in person. I truly am. But this will mean we get to meet sooner. Naturally this news comes when I am out of the country and in possibly the most boring trade negotiations I have ever been part of in my life. _

(Rey had smiled at that. She’d had the sense that this was supposed to make her smile, even if she didn’t know how boring trade negotiations actually were. Somehow she thought that Unkar Plutt manhandling opposing gang members in the back of the garage didn’t count.)

_I cannot wait to meet you. Please make yourself at home when you arrive. I will hopefully not be there too long after you._

And then the squiggly printed signature.

She can’t tell if the letter is making her nervousness better or worse, but it is there, in her hand, proof that this is really happening.

_What happens if, when you meet him, your eyes don’t change and you don’t get a glimpse of your future together? What if this is all some hoax, some lie?_

Nothing can make that thought go away. It’ll be there, firmly rooted in her mind, until everything is different. Visions of Ben Solo shoving her away, calling her a liar, the press hounding her, everyone thinking she was just some gold digger because of course some Jakku waitress-slash-mechanic is a gold digger

“Champagne?” the stewardess asks again.

“No thank you,” she says weakly, folding the letter back up again.

The paper had been so crisp when Dopheld had handed it to her. Now she can see the signs of her own fingerprints on it. She’d been so careful. She’d showered twice since she had known this was happening, but maybe there’s no real way to get rid of signs of Jakku. Even if she didn’t work in the recycling plants and garbage processors, even if her scavenging days were—thankfully—signs of the dirt and dust and garbage that Jakku was so well known for still covered her.

She swallows.

What must he have thought when he’d learned that he had someone from _Jakku_ as his soulmate? She’d gone to the library to check the HoloNet about him. Only about thirty percent of what she’d seen on the desktop there had actually stuck in her mind. She’d been in far too much a daze but she’d been overcome with a panic and had to do _something _to make herself feel better about everything. She didn’t know _anything_ about politics. She didn’t pay attention to the news, she hadn’t voted in either the primaries or the general election—oh god, she had not voted for her soulmate—she had only known that there even was an election because the holovisions in Dex’s diner had talked about them sometimes. She’d known who Ben Solo was by the time the election was close because his face was always on the screen.

A cursory search on the HoloNet had told her that the President was nine years older than her. That he was the youngest president to ever be elected. That he’d scraped a narrow victory over Senator Armitage Hux in the primaries, and that he’d won the electoral vote, but lost the popular vote—which Rey doesn’t understand how that works. The article had only vaguely referenced infighting on the left dividing the vote from the Party of the Republic’s candidate, a man whose name she has already forgotten because she’d been trying to make sure she remembered everything else. Ben had served in the senate for two terms, and in every picture she’s found of him, he looks perfectly put together.

She’s never been in a shuttle before. She’s never seen the clouds from this angle.

She’s going to try and focus on that for a little while.

-

The Glass Palace is...everything she’d seen on holos and more. Great windows that are several stories tall let the setting sunlight filter in to illuminate wide, richly-carpeted hallways. Rey feels very small standing here. Does it feel natural for Ben?

She follows Mitaka through the hallways until she’s standing in a beautiful bedroom—too beautiful.

“There’s a bathroom through there,” he says. “And the terrace overlooks the gardens. You like gardens, yes?”

Rey remembers posting on her Codex account how much she loves gardens when she, Finn, and Rose had gone to the botanical gardens in Jakku City. She’d never seen that much green ever in one place in her whole life, and had wondered, biting back tears, how it was that Maz had gone from some place as beautiful as Takodana to someplace as desolate as Jakku. It wouldn’t surprise her if whoever was responsible for making her comfortable here had combed through her entire social media presence. That was probably required for anyone who was supposed to come within ten feet of the president, now that she thought of it.

“Is this my room?” she asks him. Mitaka cocks his head, confused. “Or is this—his?”

And he nods, understanding. “This is your room,” he says firmly. “The President asked that we make you comfortable and—ah.”

A woman comes through the door. She’s taller than Rey, and so thin that she looks like she, too, has spent most of her life scrambling to make meals happen. Except Rey is quite confident that that’s not true. Her slimness looks purposeful where Rey’s has always been accidental.

“This is Bazine Netal, the Glass Palace Media Strategist,” Mitaka says, and Bazine extends a hand. Rey shakes it and Bazine raises her eyebrows.

“We’ll need to get her a manicure,” Bazine says at once, her lips—colored with a lipstick that’s closer to black than to red—pursing into a thin line and Rey tries not to pull her hand away too rudely. “And a facial. And probably a waxing, and—”

“Comfortable, Baz,” Mitaka says to her, his eyes on Rey.

“Yes, but if there are going to be pictures of her, she can’t look like she just came out of a Jakku dumpster. Sorry,” she says, not sounding as though she’s actually sorry.

“Let’s start with a dress and go from there,” Mitaka says. “There won’t be any photos tonight, anyway.”

“We want her to make a good first impression,” Bazine replies.

“I’m sure she will just by existing,” Mitaka says and that’s when Rey decides to go out on the balcony. She really feels as though she’s going to be sick. She really and truly does. She’s going to puke her guts out right into the lovely garden three floors below and then she’ll definitely need Bazine to help her with one of her dresses because she’ll have gotten vomit over her Credit Store one. It’s nice. It has flowers on it. Rey likes flowers.

She wraps her arms around her stomach, staring out over the gardens to the city beyond. It’s like a diamond glittering in the night.

She can’t see the stars at all.

She wishes Finn and Rose were here. She wishes she weren’t alone.

_Ben will be here soon. Then you won’t be alone._

Rey swallows and squares her shoulders and returns to the room. Bazine Netal has brought out several dresses, all of which look nice, demure, and far too fine for Rey.

_But I’m going to have to get used to it, right?_

“I’m going to shower,” she says. “Then…” she looks at a blue dress with white flowers dotting it. “Then that one.”

-

Rey is waiting in a private dining room in the Residence, as Mitaka keeps calling it. It’s just her, and empty plates, and a lit candle with a lovely bouquet of flowers. Her heart is hammering.

Mitaka had told her that the President had landed safely, that he was going to freshen up (people apparently use that phrase still) and then he’d join Rey for a late dinner.

That feels like a year ago. This morning feels like ten years ago. Sitting in that hospital with Dr. Dameron feels like a lifetime ago.

She looks down at her hands.

Bazine Netal had had her way and she’d had a manicure. And pedicure. And the only reason her legs hadn’t been waxed was because, in a fit of anxiety, Rey had bought a razor the night before and shaved them for the first time in years herself. She misses the hair there. She doesn’t feel like herself right now. Not even a little bit.

_How can he like me if I don’t feel like I’m myself, _she wonders. She blinks back more tears.

_Get it together, _she snaps at herself, trying to recover some of her Jakku spitfire. She has cursed out some of Plutt’s nastier associates when they get too familiar with them, she’s kept the Teedos away from an out-of-towner who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and had had no idea about that. But it’s gone. She feels so alone.

The door opens behind her and her head snaps around.

He’s taller than she expected, and she’d expected him to be tall. He’d dwarfed the redheaded person he’d beaten during the presidential primaries from what she’d seen on the front page newspaper in the diner the following day. But not this tall. And not this broad.

She doesn’t realize she’d gotten to her feet until he’s right next to her. “Rey,” he’s saying and how had she never noticed in all the radio ads that had cut into her music at the body shop that his voice is like music?

She doesn’t really know what to do? Should she hug him? Kiss him? Wave?

She holds out her hand and he takes it, and that is when their eyes lock.

People describe it as seeing clearly for the first time, or catching a glimpse of your future—hindsight-is-twenty-twenty turned forward instead of back. Rey feels lighter than air, she feels his lips against hers even though they aren’t kissing, his arms around her waist even though they aren’t hugging. She feels her whole body shaking in a way that she only feels when her fingers are between her legs and feels her heart beating so fast that she doesn’t know how it hasn’t exhausted itself at all.

There’s a tear dripping down her face and his eyes are bright as well.

Bright and changing.

Where they had been so dark they were nearly black, they are lightening. Streaks of hazel are emerging in his irises and Rey’s throat closes over a sob at the sight of it.

It’s real.

He’s here.

She’s not alone.

And neither is he.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Galactic Standard Calendar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Standard_Calendar)
> 
> [ALHENACRIMSON IS THE BEST AND DREW ART AND I CRY](https://twitter.com/AlhenaCrimson/status/1163744378277498880)
> 
> [SELUNCHEN DREW A POSTER AND I'M CRYING IN THE CLUB](https://twitter.com/selunchen/status/1164231111117090817)
> 
> The Trope as Fuck Podcast also talked about this on [one of their episodes](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3IdOSDjwAeBoJfzP2fhMrk)!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for waiting. the fic is (mostly) done at this point though i'm still working on some edits for it. if the chapter count updates after today, it's because i'm still working on those and decided to break stuff up differently, but i think this is likely going to be in the ballpark of where we land. i anticipate being able to update it fairly regularly (~weekly/but also whimsically) moving forward. thank you thank you thank you for your lovely, kind reviews. i have not gotten to all of them yet--i hope to but have been a little overwhelmed by life of late. 
> 
> for those of you who have been waiting for this chapter, i added a few things into chapter 1 as made sense for the entire fic. nothing super duper major (though i retconned the mention of holdo for reasons), but wanted to give you a head's up. 
> 
> now that the fic has been for reals written let me actually thank:
> 
> jeeno -- for reals w/endless encouragement and support
> 
> politicalmamaduck -- for letting me slide into her dms and help me figure out who should be which character as i tried to populate the political landscape of coruscant
> 
> AND WITHOUT FURTHER ADO
> 
> chapter twooooooooo

Rey assumes she eats. She can’t really remember what she ate just that at one point the plate in front of her is full of food and the next it’s empty with a sign that there were, at one point, scraps.

She can’t stop looking at him, and he can’t stop looking at her.

They’re both unbelievably dazed and their hands keep slipping across the table so that their fingers will brush against the other’s.

The only equivalent feeling she can use to describe this is post orgasmic. Except she hadn’t had an orgasm. Something is different now, though. It’ll never be the same. Because there’s Ben.

Ben, whose eyes have a tint of hers, and hers, she assumes, has a tint of his.

“I have cleared my schedule tomorrow,” Ben says. Is that the first time he’s spoken since they touched hands? It must be. Surely she’d remember if he’d said anything else.

“I don’t have a schedule,” Rey tries to joke. His lips twitch in a smile—humoring her, but kindly.

“You’ve never been to Coruscant.” It’s not a question. Rey takes a deep breath.

“I have not. I’ve never left Jakku.” He nods. He knows. So she asks, “How much about me have you looked up?”

“A basic security clearance, and what was in the file you submitted for the database,” he says. “My people did some closer looking at your social media presence but I did not look.”

“Because you didn’t want to or didn’t have time?”

He cocks his head. “I wanted to meet you first,” he says calmly. “Bazine and Mitaka—that’s seeing if there’s need for damage control.”

“Damage control?” The warm feeling his fingers had left against hers is starting to fade.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says at once, leaning forward and Rey swallows. She lets him continue. “I wish I were an ordinary man. I do. But I’m not. And if there was anything on any of your profiles that a reporter could dig into to use against me, it’s better that we know about it in advance.”

“Like what?” Rey asks, baffled.

“Like that you do drugs illegally, or that you’re…” his voice trails away as though trying to find a delicate way to say what’s on his mind.

“Or that I work for someone who beats people up in the back room.” She states it, doesn’t ask it, and Ben’s face tightens.

“Yes,” he responds slowly.

“Well, I do,” she says. “Or, I did, I suppose. I suppose I’m here now instead, aren’t I?”

“If you’d like to be,” Ben says carefully. “Like I say—I want to meet you, to spend time with you. To know who you are beyond just what’s in your file.”

Suddenly Rey’s throat is feeling very tight. The sincerity she sees on his face is just as overwhelming as everything leading up to it.

“What’s wrong?” he asks her and his fingers are brushing hers again. She wishes they were as calming as they were the first time, but she still feels a rush of warmth emanating through her from his hand.

“It’s just a lot,” she mutters. She wishes Finn were here, wishes she didn’t feel as though she were crazy for wanting to run and hide from all this, all of a sudden. All her life, she’d been a nothing, a nobody. But she wasn’t to him—and he is the fucking President.

It feels like something out of a fairy tale or something.

His face softens. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It is. We can take it slowly. See what comes our way.”

“Will people even let that happen?” she asks and looks back at him. “Won’t people think we’re hiding something if we’re…”

“They can give us a week at least,” he growls.

“You said you had a day.”

“A day clear of work—not a day before...I don’t know. Bazine will have ideas of how to handle all this and will make a recommendation. I’m not going to throw you to the sharks. I’m not going to throw either of us to the sharks.”

He brushes his fingers against hers, trying to be reassuring. She wants to be reassured. So she smiles at him, and he relaxes.

“Have they shown you around the Residence yet?” he asks her, getting to his feet.

Rey shakes her head which is how she ends up being taken through the suite of rooms that, until today, Ben has occupied completely by himself. There’s a living room that’s bigger than the trailer she had shared with Finn and Rose, there’s a study that’s walled in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, there’s a gym with a treadmill and a few different weight machines, there’s a kitchen that looks like it has never once been used, and at the end of the hall, behind a pair of double doors…

“This is my room,” he says in a low voice, pushing the doors open.

She swallows and stands on the threshold. There’s a couch and a set of very comfortable looking chairs, a holovision and a large canopied bed, bigger than any bed she’d ever seen. _He’s tall, _she thinks idly. _He needs a big bed._

Ben steps inside the room but Rey stays put, biting her lip.

If she follows him into this room, well—

Well, there’s no going back. And if she’s feeling nervous, and overwhelmed, she—she doesn’t want that to be her first time with him.

“Rey?” he asks her carefully. Then he sighs and walks back towards her. “It’s ok.” And one large hand comes and brushes a loose strand of her hair that Bazine had tried _so_ hard to put up in an elaborate updo off her face.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, and that’s when it happens.

He presses his lips to her forehead. Maybe he’d known that kissing her lips would be too much right now, or maybe he just wants to comfort her. She doesn’t know. All she’s really aware of is that her mind sort of goes blissfully blank and she does actually believe that it is ok.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he murmurs to her, kissing her forehead once more.

“What time should I be up?” she asks him.

He shrugs. “Whenever you like. I’ll probably be up at four.”

Her eyes widen.

“In the _morning_?”

He nods, his eyebrows twitching, amused.

“_Why_?” she asks. Even at the diner, she hadn’t had to be up until five, and that was only if she had opening, which she tried with all her power never to be scheduled for.

“Habit,” he says. He gives her a crooked smile. “I’ll try and sleep in a bit, since it looks like you won’t be awake.”

“Kill me if I’m awake at four,” Rey mutters and he laughs and—well—

It’s music, his laugh, throaty and glorious. She wants it to last forever, but it does fade away into another forehead kiss.

“Goodnight, Rey.”

And she slips away down the hall to the room they’d brought her to that morning.

-

Rey has trouble sleeping.

The bed is too soft. There’s like...a thing underneath the sheets that’s stuffed with down and the pillows aren’t lumpy and the blankets aren’t patchy. It should be a blissful night’s rest. Instead, she tosses and turns.

President Solo is Ben, her soulmate. Now that she’s not in the room with him, now that she’s not sitting there staring at his eyes spiked with hazel, she remembers that he is, in fact, President of the New Galactic Republic.

She wishes she’d paid more attention to politics, that she had a better understanding of everything than one quick, panicked HoloNet search in the Jakku Public Library because she couldn’t afford a mobilecom, much less a mobilecom with a data plan and the HoloNet at her fingertips. It had seemed like a universe away when she’d been in Jakku. What did politics matter when you had to make ends meet, when no one in Coruscant understood anything about what it was like working in the junkyards of Jakku, where junklords could, and would, vie for a much more tangible power than whatever people in the capital thought they held? And then it had been on her front doorstep on Airforce Three.

She must have fallen asleep because eventually she does wake up to a gentle knocking on the door.

“Ms. Johnson?” she hears Bazine ask quietly.

Rey looks around the room, her eyes settling on the chrono on the bedside table. It’s eight in the morning.

She can’t quite bring herself to be angry as she gets up out of her bed and opens the door for Bazine.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hello,” Bazine replies, sweeping past her, carrying a few garment bags which she hangs up on the bathroom door. “Wanted to make sure you looked good today.”

Rey takes a deep breath. _She’s Ben’s staff. He trusts her. _

“What are you recommending?” she asks as carefully as she can.

“I spent most of yesterday going through your social media,” Bazine says. “We don’t want to put you in something you won’t be comfortable in—” As though Rey’s going to be comfortable in anything that she hadn’t picked herself, “—and these are some options I’ve come up with.”

The first garment bag contains a plain white tank top and a pair of shorts and Rey is more than a little surprised. The tank top looks comfortable enough, but she hadn’t expected something so…well, like it would be something she’d wear.

She glances at Bazine and Bazine raises her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Nothing,” Rey replies. Bazine’s eyebrows go up even higher. “All right, I just was expecting something a little more…” she remembers the dresses from yesterday. “Or a little less...I don’t know. Something. Formal.”

Bazine pauses for a moment, then sits down on the edge of Rey’s bed. “Ms. Johnson,” she says firmly, “I’m very good at my job. And I care a lot about doing it well. Which means that, no matter what the President requests, the press stay _isn’t_ going to stay off your back while you’re out today. Which means you should look the way you want to look, because anything short of that will make his opponents think we’re trying to doll you up to be something you’re not, which they’ll spin to make _him_ look like he’s controlling you. Which means you need to look natural, but also cute, because if you don’t look cute, then the rags will rip you to shreds, which doesn’t look good for him either. The whole country is waiting to watch you fail,” Rey’s stomach does a horrible, swooping thing, “and I’m here to help you.” She gives Rey a once over. “I’m good at my job and I’m not going to let you fall. Can you believe that?”

Rey needs to because her heart is hammering in her chest right now. Everyone’s waiting for her to fail. Everyone’s waiting for him to fuck her over. Or her to fuck _him_ over.

She nods.

“Good, now go shower, and wash your hair again. We need it as clean as possible. I’ll tell the President to be ready for you around ten.”

“Do we really need that long?” Rey asks. It’s only just after eight.

“Yes, because once you’re dressed, I’m going to go through a catalogue with you and we’re going to get your wardrobe sorted once and for all. I have some options I think you’ll like.”

It feels absolutely ridiculous, going through a catalogue on Bazine’s datapad over a breakfast that had materialized while she was in the shower, yes-ing and no-ing different options and letting Bazine look at her body and say she doesn’t have enough chest for this, or her hips are too narrow for that. The longer that she spends in the other woman’s company the more she understands her, she thinks. Bazine is no-nonsense, and brutally honest. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise her at all when Bazine asks,

“Do you want us to get you lingerie as well? Not just the cotton underwear and bras you ordered, something lacier?” Rey flushes.

The conversation about bras to begin with had been awkward enough. Rey had never owned one before, hadn’t had a chest big enough to warrant one, but Bazine had insisted on buying her no fewer than five after pulling out a measuring tape and measuring her chest herself. “This will be fine for today,” she’d said, gesturing to Rey’s chest in the tank top, “But it won’t do at pretty much any other outing. If there’s even a hint of the shape of your nipples in a photograph…” she’d let her voice trail away and do all the dirty work for her.

But this is infinitely worse. Somehow her nipples being the fixation of every tabloid in the entire country is nothing quite like being asked if she wants sexy underwear to wear for the President.

“Not today,” Bazine says reading Rey’s face. “Well, you just let me know.”

“Right,” Rey says. “Thanks. Is that it?”

“I think so,” Bazine says and she stands Rey up. She picks a piece of lint off the shirt and says. “We didn’t light test this, so if you’re outside, try and stay out of the shade. Nipples.”

And then she’s gone.

Once again, Rey feels like she’s going to be sick.

She stands there in the middle of a too-nice bedroom, that’s all white and clean and huge and the bed is too soft and all she can think is that she shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be here at all. Her parents had thrown her away like garbage, what is she doing in Glass Palace?

There’s a knock on her door and she glances at the chrono again. It’s ten.

“Rey?” Ben calls to her through the door.

So she forces a smile onto her face and hurries to the door, doing what she has—historically—done so well and shoving all her anxieties away, locking them deep down inside her chest.

“Hey,” she says, smiling up at him. He’s freshly shaven, his hair a little damp from a recent shower, and he’s wearing a button down and jeans—probably about as casual as a president can get. Before she can let herself think it’s a bad idea, she stands on the tips of her toes and presses her lips to his cheek. “Morning,” she murmurs.

“Morning,” he replies, his voice about an octave lower than it had been when he’d knocked on her door.

“What are we doing?” she asks him and he gives her a crooked smile that does something very different to her insides than everything Bazine had warned her about earlier.

“And ruin the surprise?”

“I hate waiting,” Rey says.

“Even if it’s good waiting?” Ben asks and his hand is on the small of her back now, pulling her closer. She likes the way his face and neck smell. He has good aftershave. It’s sort of calming just to be close to him, if it’s just the two of them and she doesn’t have to think about everything that surrounds him.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t press him as they leave the Residence together, a whole host of praetorian guards in with their sunglasses and earpieces following them out of the Glass Palace and into a long, armored transport. The inside is dark from the tinted windows, and the seats are the softest leather that Rey has ever touched.

“We’re working on getting you a detail,” Ben tells her, nodding to the guards who are getting onto speeders on either side of them. “But until that’s settled it’ll be best if you stick to the Palace unless I’m around.” He looks at her nervously. “We should have everything in place by the end of the week.”

Rey nods. “I can take care of myself,” she tries, but Ben shakes his head.

“No—I don’t doubt that. Jakku’s not safe. But this is different. This is,” he takes a deep breath. “If something happens to you, it’s a threat to national security. If they hurt you, they hurt me.” A shiver runs up her spine and she swallows. “It’s nothing to worry about, though,” he says, leaning forward and taking her hand. Her breath catches in her throat. “You’ll be safe, I promise. We’ll be safe.”

His eyes are so earnest and there’s the smell of his aftershave again, and her hand tightens in his.

“I’ll be safe,” she says. “And I’ll wait to do things outside your perimeter until there’s a guard in place.”

He looks relieved. “Thank you,” he says, and he raises her hands to his lips. “Now,” and he turns his attention to the window of the transport. “This is the theater district.”

While Ben had not grown up in Coruscant, Rey learns that he had spent the vast majority of his adult life here. He’d grown up in Chandrila, about two hours outside of the city, had gone to boarding school in Hosnian, and then had almost immediately joined the Congressional Page program, where he’d spent two years working for Senators and Congresspeople until his mother had insisted that he go to college at last.

Every place they pass—he knows something about it. Here’s where this president used to meet his soulmate’s mother in secret to make sure he was tying his tie the way she liked it. That’s where Crimson Dawn was broken up by the feds. This is where a war was prevented with a kiss. Rey loves listening to him talk, likes looking between his eyes—always on her—and the places he’s pointing out to her.

“How much of this are you making up?” she asks him.

“Only about ten percent,” he says with another one of those crooked smiles she grins up at him.

“Ten percent?” she asks.

“Maybe eleven.”

“Just another lying politician, I see,” she huffs playfully and his eyes do this thing where he’s looking at her so fondly. She wants to pull herself into his arms, rest her head on his shoulder, cuddle up next to him. _He’s mine, _she thinks and every time she does, there’s just a little bit of exhilaration there. She’s not alone. She has him. And he has her.

The transport stops in the park district and that’s when it all starts to get real again. The praetorian guards flank them at a respectful distance but the park is empty of anyone. In the distance, Rey sees guards under trees, on the high points of hills, scanning the surroundings for lurkers. They had cleared the park completely.

Just for Ben.

Just for _her_.

“This way,” he whispers in her ear and he leads her to the left, up a hill, through a gate and past a pond.

Rey stops completely.

“What is it?” Ben asks her. She’s staring at the water and she can’t quite bring herself to let go of his hand, so instead she pulls him gently to the edge of the water.

There’s a frog, sitting in the shallows, huge and green-brown. “I’ve never seen one before,” she whispers, finally letting him go so she can crouch down.

“No sudden movements,” Ben warns her. “Or it’ll hop away.”

Rey just crouches there, staring at it. It glugs at her, blinking. Then its tongue pops out of its mouth and grabs a fly out of the air and Rey gasps in delight, looking up at Ben. He’s smiling down at her, and suddenly she feels self-conscious. He’s seen frogs before. He’s probably seen this frog alone twelve times. And he had something planned. She doesn’t need to act like a child.

“Sorry,” she mutters, getting up.

“Don’t,” he says, and he’s still sort of glowing at her.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t get shy,” he says. “You’ve never seen a frog before. Enjoy it.”

She bites her lip. “Yeah, but—”

“Do you think I’m going to think less of you because you’re delighted?” he asks. “I’ll bring a million frogs to this park if it makes you this happy.”

The declaration is a sweet one but it makes Rey’s heart sort of go cold. “What’s wrong,” he asks her sharply. “What did I say?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, taking his hand.

“Rey.” He sounds almost impatient now.

“You’ve read my file,” she says quietly and she can’t bring herself to look at him. It had come on so suddenly and _why_? Why shouldn’t she have someone who’d fill a park with frogs for her? Why shouldn’t she have someone who cares about her, thinks she’s valuable? She picks at the tank top that Bazine had gotten for her as though there’s a loose thread, even though there definitely isn’t one.

“Connect some dots for me,” Ben says carefully.

She doesn’t want to say it out loud though. She doesn’t want to.

“Rey,” he prods quietly.

“Let’s keep going,” she says firmly, looking up at him. His jaw juts stubbornly and she wonders when it was the last time someone told him no. She sighs. “Later, ok?”

He doesn’t respond right away. “I’m not the type to be deflected with a later—unless you mean it. I won’t forget.” It’s not threatening. It’s not even unkind. It’s just firm. When has anyone ever been firm with her? Finn leaves her to process and Rose always acts like nothing’s wrong until Rey’s feeling better.

“Later,” she says, wondering if she means it.

She’ll cross that bridge when she gets there.

Ironically, they cross a bridge on the other side of the pond, though now they are walking in silence. Rey doesn’t let herself get distracted by the squirrels that run by, or the birds that flutter over head. She keeps one foot in front of the other.

_You have someone who wants the world for you, _she thinks. _And not because he’s your friend and wants the best—because it’ll make him happy if you’re happy. It’ll make him sad if you’re sad. It’ll…_

“My parents abandoned me,” Rey says quietly as they continue down a path. “When I was really little. I’m not used to people...caring if I’m happy.”

Ben stops walking and she pauses next to him. His hand is still holding hers, and she can’t bring herself to look at his face.

He starts walking again silently and she does too. After a moment, he says, “Did you ever find out what happened to them?”

“No,” Rey says dully.

“Do you want me to order the Investigation Bureau to find out?”

“What?” Rey yelps, turning to look at him “No—no, I—”

“Because it’s just a com and they’ll be able to—”

“No, I don’t want to know,” Rey hears herself say, and her breath catches at the words. Years of optimism had melted into years of numbed pain because that optimism hadn’t led to anywhere. Faith that they’d come back for her had never led to any fruition. That had been part of what had led her to Ben—that she was tired of waiting to see when her soulmate would come along for her, when her parents would be back for her. “I mean—I do, but—but I don’t. I don’t want to know what happened to them. They didn’t come back for me. That’s all I need to know.” She swallows. She doesn’t want more pain over this. Not now.

Finn would be proud of her. He’d always tried to get her to let go of her parents.

How strange it is—now that she’s here with someone who actually…

“Hey,” he whispers and his thumb is brushing across her cheek and that’s how she realizes she’s crying.

“Sorry,” she mutters stepping back and rubbing her eyes.

“No, don’t be sorry,” he tells her—firmly again. And he’s pulled her into his arms and her face is pressed against his chest. One of his hands is resting at the small of her back, the other just at the base of her skull, cradling her head as though it’s something precious to him.

“It’s just us now,” he whispers. “Just us.”

“Us and the praetorian guard,” she whispers, seeing one of them not ten feet behind Ben.

“You get used to them,” he says. “But it does suck for privacy.”

“Haven’t had much of that anyway recently,” she tells him, which is how she ends up telling him about the tiny trailer she shared with Finn and Rose until the day before, about foster homes and shelters before that. His grip is tight in hers as they keep walking through the park, and he listens to her tell him more about working for Unkar Plutt because her options were a junklord’s garage front for his crime ring or working in the junkyards and everyone knows if you start working in the junkyards, you never stop working in the junkyards, she tells him about the diner, about dropping out of school because what was the point of graduating if you couldn’t pay for college even if you have good grades and try hard, about being on her own even if she had her friends.

She tells him everything she can think to tell him as they walk because it feels just so good to tell him everything, to know that he’ll care. It’s different than it is with Finn. She knows Finn will care but she doesn’t know that he’ll feel it the way she does. Ben seems to.

It’s not until they’ve stopped that she really notices where they are and her breath leaves her chest in a quiet “oh.”

_Oh,_ because there are roses as far as the eye can see, each perfectly petaled and smelling so softly of the sorts of things she’d smelled in Maz’s bathroom before Maz had passed. She lifts her hands to her face, covering her mouth as she looks around.

“Thought you’d like this. You like flowers.”

“I thought you didn’t stalk my social media.”

“You were wearing a flower dress yesterday,” he says quickly. “And you were wearing a floral top in that picture that was in the news the other day as well.”

It’s like with the frog, but different. Rey steps towards a light purple rose and presses her nose into it, sighing. That’s what peace smells like. Happiness. Joy. “Thank you,” she whispers to him.

That’s when he pulls a pen knife out of his pocket and steps towards the rose. With a simple cut, he’s removed it from the stem and is handing it to her. “Careful of the thorns.”

“Are you allowed to do that?” she asks him.

“How much you want to bet I won’t get in trouble?”

She grins, and breaks the thorns off the stem before tucking the rose behind her ear. Then she takes Ben’s hand and they keep walking through the garden.

“It’s where we grow all our international award-winning roses. I think those ones up there are the ones we’re going to submit this year,” Ben says, pointing, “That one won three years ago,” he adds, nodding to Rey’s rose.

“I didn’t even know there were rose competitions,” Rey says. What a strange world she’s moved into. She had struggled to keep plants alive in Jakku—just a spot of color in all the sand—and here they have competitions for roses that they compete with internationally.

“Annually,” Ben says. “We can go to the next one if you like.”

“Have you been to them before?” Rey asks.

“With my parents when I was a kid,” he says. “Not since, though.”

“I’d go if you wanted to,” Rey says, peeking up at him.

“Do you want to?”

“I—” she swallows.

“It’s ok if you don’t,” he says at once. “I just want you to be happy, Rey.”

“It’s a lot to get used to,” she says slowly, and Ben sighs, sagging a little bit.

“Of course,” he tells her. “Of course it is. We can plan for things when you are more settled.”

-

They leave the park after an hour and when they reach the entrance, there are people milling around, being kept at bay by the praetorian guards.

“Oh my god there she is!” she hears someone yell and Ben’s hand tightens in hers as he steps between Rey and the sudden flashing of lights and cameras.

“No, it’s fine,” Rey says.

“Bazine was supposed to keep them away,” he says frustrated, trying to pull her towards the transport.

“And I don’t think that anything could have stopped them. Neither did she,” Rey says. She squeezes Ben’s hand. “Would it be horrible to say hello to them? Give them the picture they want and then—”

“There’s no feeding the beast in a way that will satiate it,” Ben says, looking down at her. “Trust me. I grew up in this world. I know it.”

“Hey Rey!” someone shouts. “What’s he like as a kisser?” Ben’s jaw tightens.

“Let’s go,” he mutters, and he steers her towards the transport. Rey does her best not to look towards the cameras and sags in relief the moment that the doors slide shut behind her and they are off towards whatever Ben has planned next.

His jaw is still tight. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Rey leans her head on his shoulder and he tilts his head down to rest on hers. “I just want things to be perfect for you,” he murmurs, sounding almost afraid for the first time since she’d met him. “I—I want you to be happy.”

Rey looks up at him. His eyes are so soft, and his lips are so red and he’s hers. The reality of that hasn’t faded—she doesn’t know when or if it will. She hopes it won’t. She tilts her head up and presses her lips, softly, gently to his. “I am happy,” she whispers to him. “I’m happy just to have you.”

It’s like a dam breaks, because a moment later his lips are on hers, feasting there as he kisses her. His breath tastes vaguely of coffee and his tongue, as it slides between her lips, sends a fire through her entire body that makes her whimper and push herself against him, her chest against his, her heart. His hands are toying with the bottoms of her shorts, slipping deliciously just under the denim there and a very insistent part of her mind wants him to push his fingers further up her thighs to where they meet. But he doesn’t. He just keeps toying with her skin and panting into her mouth until the transport slows and he lets out a low groan and looks around.

They’ve reached a little square in the midst of the million tall buildings of Coruscant and through the tinted windows, Rey sees that people are being redirected away from a restaurant that is completely empty.

“I’m going to need a minute,” Ben says quietly, leaning his head back against the leather seat and closing his eyes, which is when she notices.

She’d been too focused on his fingers on her thighs, his tongue in her mouth to really process anything beyond that, but as she looks at him sitting there, she realizes he’d been angling his hips away from her—and to no avail it seems. Jutting out of his waist is...well…

She bites back a giggle.

“Are you laughing at me?” he asks, opening one eye to glare at her amusedly.

“Absolutely not, Mr. President,” she grins, which only makes him open both eyes and grab her and pull her close and kiss her again.

“That’s probably not helping,” she laughs into his mouth.

“You’re not helping,” he mutters, which is probably the best response he can come up with with his erection rubbing against her leg.

His kisses slow, but his arms don’t leave her, and they sit like that for a long while. Rey’s heart is hammering in her throat, but it’s not until Ben’s had enough time to calm down and is helping her to her feet that she realizes how wet she is.

Ben’s hand rests on the small of her back as he leads her quickly across the square. There are people with mobilecoms taking pictures of her and Rey sees Ben’s jaw tighten once again. She smiles up at him. _Focus on me, not it, _she thinks at him. Because she hasn’t even been here a day, but she knows already that she’s at her happiest when she’s focusing on him and not it. She wonders if he’s ever been able not to focus on it. His life had been spent in this city, after all, and his mother was a senator for many years.

He relaxes once they’re in the restaurant, which is completely devoid of other customers. Praetorian guards are standing at the door and a waiter comes by at once with menus for them.

“There’s no prices on this menu,” Rey frowns, looking up at Ben.

“You get to order whatever you want, regardless of price.”

She leans forward and looks at his even as he pulls it away. “Yours has prices on it,” she accuses.

“You’re not paying. You don’t need to—”

“Yes, but if it’s expensive, it’s not worth the—”

“Alternatively, if it’s expensive it’s my money and let me feed you.”

Rey’s eyebrows twitch.

Part of her wants to kiss him again just for saying those four little words. _Let me feed you. _

“See, you say that,” she says, “But I’ll bankrupt you this way.”

Which is how she ends up ordering half the menu, much to the horror of the poor waitress who takes one look at her frame—always too thin—and then at Ben as if needing his sign-off on what Rey’s ordering.

“You really think you can eat all that?” he asks her.

“Watch me,” she replies.

And he does. Plate after plate of every appetizer Rey had wanted to try comes out on the nicest porcelain she has ever seen. She’s not completely rude—she lets Ben try some of it. But the food keeps coming and Rey keeps eating. It’s easily the most delicious meal she’s ever had by a mile and a half.

“You’re going to make yourself sick,” Ben says. He’s eating a sandwich and a salad. Rey’s on her third type of fried potato.

“Nope,” she replies.

“Do you always eat this much?” Ben asks, half laughing.

“No, I never eat this much,” Rey replies and the laughter fades immediately and his face gets very serious and she can tell just from the look on his face that he’s—

“Did you starve in Jakku?”

“I think technically not,” she says. “Dex was always good about making sure we had a plate during our shifts. But it’s not...farm to table everything. I was lucky to get dehydrated portions some days.”

Ben leans forward and his hand finds hers under the table. “Never again,” he says earnestly. “You never have to eat that ever again.”

She gives him a soft smile. Something sits weird in the way he says it. Like he’s trying to make every problem she’s ever had in her life go away, just because he’s here now, and he can just wave his magic presidential powers and...and she doesn’t know.

But also, it feels so nice to have someone say that to her, to want that for her. She never wants to have to eat like she’s starving again.

“You got to admit, though,” she says, “you’re impressed.”

“Extremely,” Ben says. “You demolished this food. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

She grins. She can’t wait to tell Finn about this. This whole day. This whole weird dream that has become her life.

She starts to feel extremely drowsy in the transport to the next thing he has planned and they don’t stay at the art museum—completely emptied of people—very long. She notes that there’s a lot of beautiful still life flowers (he seems to have fixated on this little detail, which she’s not sure she minds) and some photographs of landscape that takes her breath away before she needs to sit on a bench and let her eyes lose focus.

“You ate too much,” Ben says, sitting next to her and slipping an arm around her waist again. She likes his arms around her waist.

“I did not,” she replies.

“You need a nap.”

“I’m not a child,” she retorts.

“Ok.” He’s smiling, though and he’s kissing her temple and she lets her eyelids flutter shut as she sighs. This feels so good—having him there. Having warm arms, and a smile, and someone who wants her to eat and takes her to art museums and parks and—

And cares about her.

She turns her face towards him again and kisses him.

She likes that—having someone who wants to kiss her.

She’d thought she’d had that once or twice when she was a teenager, growing up lonely and just wanting fumbling connection with someone else. She’d kissed and fondled other lonely teenagers, she’d slid her own fingers between her legs and thought about what it would be like when she found someone who wanted to keep his arms around her, wanted to kiss her, hold her, feed her.

She shivers slightly into his lips, wondering what it would be like if—when—his fingers did make their way there.

Maybe she should have let Bazine order her lingerie.

It isn’t until she hears footsteps approaching that she realizes how used she’d gotten to the emptiness of the museum. She and Ben pull away from one another and there’s Mitaka standing right there.

“Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt,” he says.

“What?” Ben growls. Rey looks down and—yes—there’s a slight, but not excessive bulge in his pants.

“There’s a situation,” Mitaka says. “We need you back at the Glass Palace.”

“What sort of situation?” Ben asks.

“Codeword, sir,” Mitaka says, giving Rey a glance.

Ben nods with a sigh and gets to his feet, offering his hand to Rey and helping her stand too.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I’m so sorry—I have to—”

“It’s all right,” she tells him.

“I just wanted one day,” he half-whines, before shaking his head. “Everything’s always too much to ask.” And they leave the museum.

-

The moment they are back at the Glass Palace, Mitaka whisks Ben away and Rey goes back to the Residence and throws herself onto the too-soft bright white bed in her room. It’s been made while she was out, and she lets herself stare up at the ceiling.

Then she reaches for the comlink on the bedside table and fiddles with the options there.

“Operator, how may I direct your communication?” comes a voice and Rey almost drops the comlink. She hadn’t been expecting that.

“Sorry, I was—”

“Yes?”

“I was trying to reach Dex’s diner in Jakku?” she says. “I have the number and can—”

“One moment while I place the communication for you,” the operator says and then she hears a beeping sound. Then, “Dex’s what can I get you.”

“Finn?”

She almost cries hearing his voice.

“Rey,” Finn says and then she hears him say out of the comlink’s mouthpiece, “I’m taking ten,” and then, back to her, “How is it? Is it crazy?”

And she tells him everything—about the park, about the restaurant, about last night and this morning, and Ben. Ben and his soft eyes, Ben and the way he wanted to take care of her, wanted her to be happy.

“You have to come visit,” she says.

“You convince Dex and Sebajax to let me take a few days off and I’m there, I promise,” he says. “Me and Rose. We miss you. It’s weird being here without you.”

“It’s weird being _here _without me,” Rey says.

“Without you?” Finn asks.

“I just—” she takes a deep breath. “It’s strange. I don’t know. It’s very easy not to feel like myself because why would _Rey Johnson_ ever be here, you know?”

“Yeah,” Finn says. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” It sounds like he doesn’t actually think it makes any sense at all though. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe,” Rey says. “I hope so. Or...I don’t know. Maybe it would be better not to. I can’t expl—”

“Got to run, Dex is hollering,” Finn says. “Listen, com again though, ok? I want to know how things are. And I’ll try and get time to come visit.”

“I will. I’ll talk to you later.”

And the communication ends and Rey slumps back onto the bed, feeling suddenly so very lonely all over again.

-

Rey eats a late dinner alone that night in the dining room that she and Ben had had dinner in the night before. Had it only been one day? It feels like someone else’s life.

The food is delicious, and the chef—because there is a family chef, apparently, different from the practical army of chefs who make dinner for various functions of state—is polite but distant whenever Rey tries to compliment him, and she gets the impression that he’s only staying in the room because he feels bad that she’s eating alone on her second night with her soulmate.

_He’s the President, _she tells herself when she has to tell herself _something _to keep the loneliness at bay. _He has important work to do._

After dinner, she goes into the sitting room and curls up on a couch and flicks through different channels on the holovision until she falls into a quiet doze, the white noise of sitcom laughter and humorous music lulling her more than anything else. It’s familiar. Finn and Rose could be sitting there with her, watching the show, cuddled up together the way they always are.

Distantly, she hears the holo shut off and feels warm fingers brushing her cheek. “Hey,” Ben whispers. “Do you want to sleep on a bed?”

Her eyes flutter open. He looks tired. His face has some stubble on it—a five o’clock shadow long overgrown—and his eyes are a bit dull from tired.

She nudges her face out and he gets the idea, his lips brushing against hers with a sigh.

She sits up, stretching and yawning.

“What time is it?”

“Just past midnight.” He’d been busy with whatever it was for hours and hours.

“Did you just get back?”

He nods.

“You should go to bed,” she tells him. “If you’ll be up at four tomorrow.”

He grimaces.

“No, I have to go back down to the Situation Room. But I wanted to come up and check on you. I’m so sorry I had to—”

“Don’t, it’s fine,” she repeats. The words _Situation Room _sound unbelievably daunting. A well-named room.

“It’s not,” he presses, but sighs. “But that’s…” He sighs, and she reaches up to cup his cheek.

“Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Depends,” he grimaces.

“On the...situation?”

He nods. He looks so tired, and so much older than he had at any point in the day. 

He pulls her into his arm and hugs her for a long moment. “I’m glad you’re here,” he tells her. “I’m so glad.”

“I am too,” she whispers. It’s when Ben’s around that things feel right, like her life just clicked into place. It’s everything else that makes her feel lonely, and isolated and not herself.

He walks her back to her room, and sits on the edge of her bed, his hand in hers as she lies there, watching him. Gently she pulls his hand.

“I want to,” he whispers, looking at her and there’s a hunger there that makes her throat go dry.

“Oh—no—I didn’t mean—” because she’d just wanted him to lie down next to her, hold her, kiss her. She hadn’t wanted to—but also she does want to—

Her face heats. So does his. His ears even go red.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I just wanted you to—”

“No, don’t—”

And his lips find hers, kissing her desperately, his hands fisting in her hair, his chest crushing her down into the bed. His teeth clack against hers, and he’s almost gasping into her lips and it takes a moment for her to realize that he’s steadying himself.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“What—why—”

And then he’s gone, the door closing behind him and Rey can’t even begin to understand.

So she rips the blankets back from the bed and takes off after him. “Ben?” she calls but he’s already getting into an elevator, whisking himself away from her down to the situation room and the look on his face as the doors close—well Rey doesn’t know what to make of it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [cries in rose color symbolism](http://www.passiongrowers.com/web/ot/colors.asp)
> 
> also if y'all are ever in portland, oregon in the summer, go to the [international rose test garden](https://www.portlandoregon.gov/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&PropertyID=1113) there that was a life changing visit for me tbh
> 
> n1ff1n made [this lovely aesthetic](https://shmisolo.tumblr.com/post/187777475902/n1ff1n-fanfiction-aesthetics-dear-mr) over on tumblr <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> howdy y'all happy chapter 3!
> 
> the next one probably won't be for a few more weeks. i've been prioritizing edits on [there is another](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20626217/chapters/48977006) bc those are gnarlier and i'm about to go on vacation for two weeks. my goal is, coming back from vacation, everything on this one will be squared away and we can fall into a weekly update cadence, but it might be another 2.5 before the next one comes through (though earlier if i can swing it!)
> 
> thanks, once again, for your patience! seriously--it means the world <3. also thanks to waffles for [this lovely moodbort](https://twitter.com/crossing_winter/status/1176608461842460672)

She doesn’t go back to sleep. She definitely can’t go back to sleep.

He’d kissed her and then run away and what is she even supposed to make of that.

The _President_ of the _New Galactic Republic_ had kissed her and then run off to the Situation Room while apologizing for something she must absolutely be missing because he hasn’t done anything to apologize for.

So she goes into the little gym at the end of the hall and gets on the treadmill and just starts walking. Walking and walking. The chrono on the treadmill passes one in the morning. Then two. At around three, she hears the elevator doors open and footsteps moving slowly up the hall.

She’d left the door ajar when she’d come in and with a single finger, Ben pushes it open more. He looks even more exhausted than he had when he’d woken her up and stares at her in confusion. He looks like he’s too tired to form words.

“What was that?” she asks him carefully.

“Codeword clearance,” he says. “I wish I could—”

“No—why did you leave like that?”

He leans against the doorframe, rubbing it with his fingers. He doesn’t say anything for a long minute.

“I want to say things, but I’m too tired to say words,” he says.

That much, at least, Rey can see. 

“I have to fly to Mimban in four hours,” he says. Rey’s chest begins to get tight. He’s going. Just like that. Right after he’d thrown himself out of her bed as he was kissing her and now he’s.

_The job will always come before me._

It’s a chilling realization, and one that makes her drop her gaze from his face to the treadmill, telling her how many calories she has burned off.

“Ok,” Rey says, trying to smile even as she blinks tears back just as he’s saying “Come with me? It will be boring but you can see a bit of the city and—”

“Yes,” Rey says at once. “Yes, I’d love to.”

She gets off the treadmill. She’s sweaty and now that she’s stopped moving feels that she has been walking for hours. Her legs feel a bit like jelly and she can’t quite keep herself from that single tear that’s dripping down her face as she pushes herself into his arms. He holds her, pressing his face into her hair.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I’m sorry that this job is making it hard. I’m sorry that I’m making it hard. I’ll—”

“No, I get it,” she whispers. “You have a huge weight on your shoulders.”

He doesn’t reply right away. He just keeps holding her. He’s swaying slightly.

It’s intoxicating, being in his arms. Intoxicating, having him hold her this way, having his heart against her chest, his breath tickling her scalp. Someone who holds her, who feels guilty that she can’t come first because the job has to—he can’t let anything fall to the ground on his watch. 

“Why?” she asks his chest. “Why did you run away?” 

“Because I wanted to stay,” he says quietly. “And I knew I couldn’t. And I also knew that if I tried anything short of fleeing, I’d lose.”

She looks up at him. He’s trying to smile down at her, trying to soothe her but she can see in the black base of his pupils that this is a lie.

A sweet lie, but a lie all the same.

“Yeah?” she says, giving him the chance to back away from it.

“Yeah,” he says.

She swallows and bites her lip. 

But her teeth don’t keep the question in. “Why are you lying right now?”

His nostrils flare. “I’m not.”

“You’re not telling the truth.”

“I am.”

“Your eyes say otherwise,” she says and she feels his breath stop in his chest. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Ben swallows and she sees a riot of emotions cross his face and she gets the impression that, were her arms not locked around his waist, he’d be fleeing again, just the way he had earlier.

And suddenly she feels so tired. Too tired. She rests her forehead against his chest. “It’s fine,” she mumbles. “We should go to bed if we have to be up in a few hours.”

And he relaxes. “I’m sorry—waking up is going to be miserable tomorrow.” He’s pulling away, but taking her hand again, walking her to her bedroom again.

She shrugs. There are worse things in life, she does not say. Going to bed so hungry you can’t sleep at all, not knowing why your soulmate is running away from you, apologizing for things you don’t understand.

-

Ben hadn’t been wrong. Waking up was miserable. She groans when the operator coms her for her to wake her up and stumbles to the bathroom to throw cold water on her face. Bazine had emphasized the day before that she must, at all costs, always look put together. She doesn’t even begin to know how to do that now. 

Bazine had given her makeup she doesn’t know how to use, and hair tonics she doesn’t understand, and lotions and soaps—it is news to Rey that you’re supposed to use a different sort of soap for your face than you do for the rest of your body. But she does her best to use them before going to the closet and flicking on the lights and—

She gasps.

It’s full to bursting with dresses and shirts and trousers and—and just clothes. Everywhere. Shoes too. All so nice and—and—

“What do I even pack?” she wonders aloud even as there is a gentle knock on the door.

“Miss Johnson,” comes a voice. “Breakfast.”

She opens the door and there’s an old man in a steward’s uniform with a rolling tray of breakfast. 

“Thank you,” Rey rasps at him. There’s coffee, and eggs, and bacon, and toast. 

“Of course, miss,” the man says.

“What’s your name?”

“I am Cee Threepio,” the man says with a kind smile. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Johnson.”

“And you,” Rey replies. 

“Are there any particular garments that you would like packed for you on your trip to Mimban?” he asks. “The President has asked that I make sure that you are properly prepared.”

It makes Rey want to cry, though whether with relief or more overwhelm that a man old enough to be her grandfather is packing her bags for her at the behest of the President. 

She decides it’s time to eat food and have coffee and try not to feel bad that Threepio is tottering around her room, folding her things and putting them in a _very_ nice suitcase. (She wonders idly if Bazine had just burned the one that she had brought with her from Jakku.)

A soft knock on the door draws her attention to it and Ben’s standing there on the threshold. He has shaved, and clearly is just out of the shower from the state of his hair again.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she says, shoving the last of her toast into her mouth and brushing her hands on the legs of her pants.

“Ready?” he asks. His voice is oddly breathy, as though he’s nervous.

She takes his hand and together they leave her room, going to the elevator he had disappeared in last night.

They are silent in the transport on the way to the airport. He’s reading something on a datapad and Rey looks out the window. 

She wants to say something. Wants him to say something. She’s tired, and the caf is helping, but it’s not fully taking the edge off her exhaustion, off the jittery feelings in her gut. 

“I’m sorry I’m...not going to be around a lot today or tomorrow,” he says at last, putting the datapad aside and looking at her seriously. There’s a crease between his brow that makes her want to reach out and smooth it away. “This isn’t a job that makes it easy to get to know someone. And I want to do this right, but I don’t know how and—”

“And the job has to come first.” 

He grimaces.

“Please don’t take that to mean I don’t want to be with you, or know you, or love you.”

Rey looks at her hands. A horrible thought crosses her mind, her sitting there, waiting endlessly for Ben to come back from meetings, trips, press conferences. Always waiting, even for her soulmate.

“How long a trip is this?” she asks.

“We fly back tomorrow afternoon,” he says. “Which reminds me.” He takes a deep breath and for the first time since she’s met him, he feels more like a president than a person. “If you’re going to stay here, you’re going to need a staff. Bazine has already offered to help coach you and prepare you for life in the capital as your Chief of Staff, which I think she’d be suited for, but there’s going to be more than just one person can manage in terms of what you’ll be doing.”

“What I’ll be doing?” She laughs. “I’m a mechanic and a waitress. What am I going to be doing?” 

“That’s precisely it,” he says. “You can do whatever you want. And you _should_ be doing whatever you want. Even if we’re not—” a pause, so brief she wouldn’t have noticed it if she weren’t watching him closely, “—married, if you stay you’ll still be the functional First Lady of the New Galactic Republic. You can do whatever you want, and you don’t have to decide what you want to do right away, but people will expect you to do something.”

“Right,” Rey says slowly. She wishes Finn were there. Finn would know what to say to keep the weight of everything off her, make her smile, make her relax, make her feel like herself.

“It’ll be ok,” Ben tells her, the presidential aura sort of shifting and a trace of his humanity coming back through. But still, it’s not easy to believe that anything will ever feel normal. This is not normal for her. She hasn’t had to worry about food in two days, she hasn’t had to worry about _rent_—oh god, she doesn’t have an income right now, is she fucking over Finn and Rose for her portion of the rent? They hadn’t even talked about it?—she owns more clothes than she’s ever owned in her life and as far as she’s aware she didn’t have to pay for them?

And she has a soulmate.

She has a soulmate, named Ben and god she’s wanted a soulmate for so long and now she has one and her life has just exploded. It’s barely her life anymore. The only thing it has in common with a week ago is that she’s the one living it.

She leans her head against his shoulder and he presses a kiss to her forehead. Yes, the way that feels. She can make all the rest work. She’s made far worse work. 

-

Bazine is waiting for them by the transport when they get off the shuttle. 

“I have it from here, Mr. President,” she says casually and Ben glances at Rey. 

“You can’t come to these meetings, I’m afraid, and Bazine said she had some ideas of things you could do in the city.”

All Rey really wants to do right now is sleep, but she nods and smiles and just like that, Ben’s getting in a transport and Bazine is leading her to another one. Two guards follow them, dressed casually and get into the transport alongside them, while another few mount speeders. 

“He’s still working on finding you the right detail,” Bazine says. “The search is…” she sighs. “Taking longer than it should.”

“Why?” Rey asks, images of guards who think it’s a travesty having to look after a Jakku sandrat filling her mind. 

“Because none of them are good enough, apparently,” Bazine shrugs. “He’s being pickier with them than he has been historically about his own guard. I’d be flattered if I were you.”

Rey swallows. She doesn’t know what to say to that. She feels suddenly too insignificant to be this significant. _But that’s what your soulmate is supposed to be, right? Someone whose life you’d value above your own?_ She’s only known Ben for a day and she feels quite confident that she’d be a wreck if anything happened to him. She’d want Ben to have nothing but the best guards. She takes comfort that the Praetorian Guard is the most elite fighting force in recent history.

“What am I doing today?” she asks the other woman. “Ben says you want to be on my staff? Or—I don’t know.”

Bazine gives her a firm nod. “You need coaching,” she says simply. “That much is clear. You have no idea what sort of a microscope you’re under now. It comes second nature to the President—he’s lived under this pressure his whole life—but you...well, you have no idea. And you need the help. I told you yesterday, let me help you.”

“Why do you want to help?” Rey asks. 

And for the first time, Bazine smiles. “Do you have any idea how good you’ll look on a resume? I took a Jakku mechanic and made everyone believe she was born to be the First Lady. Like don’t get me wrong, the President is a sweet gig, and I am _never_ getting turned down from another job in my life because of it but you...you could be a work of art.” Bazine looks at her hungrily, and Rey nods. She respects hunger. She understands hunger. The need to get out of where you are now. Bazine wanting to help her had seemed off. Bazine wanting to help her and by doing so, helping herself on the other hand…

“What am I doing today?” Rey repeats more firmly and Bazine nods. 

“There’s a shelter for homeless teens that I thought could do with a visit. The President is...not one to focus on social projects. It wasn’t the major focus of his platform, and polling says it’s one of his weakest areas. You on the other hand…” She hands Rey a newspaper. It’s one she’d seen in the rusting paper kiosks in Jakku but had never read, a tabloid, but one that was of medium quality.

She scans the article in question, which details her rough youth, her time in foster care, and she sees exactly what Bazine is suggesting. “You want me to play to my roots.”

“I want to make sure you don’t forget them. No one will believe it if you don’t and these particular roots are ones that will play to the heartstrings. A little girl abandoned by her parents, finally finding her family, and wanting to share that story as a beacon of hope to every other downtrodden child in the country? You’d be a hero.”

“And I get that by just going to a shelter?” Rey asks, winded.

“No,” Bazine says. “But it’s the first step. I have a plan.”

She doesn’t elaborate on the plan, though, which in all honesty Rey is glad of because as the transport pulls up to the shelter, a lump fills her throat.

There are kids aged eleven to seventeen in the playground. Some of the more precocious ones are doing homework. Some are smoking. Some are playing games. All of them look wary, lonely, hungry for something they don’t know they’ll ever find.

“Ready?” Bazine asks her.

Rey squares her shoulders.

No, but that’s never stopped her before.

-

They get to the governor’s mansion a little after Ben and his retinue. According to Bazine, there will be an informal dinner with the governor later in the evening—apparently the governor of Mimban likes to keep things casual—and then Ben has a com with the Energy Secretary and then he gets an early night at Mitaka’s insistence, given how he’d barely slept in three days. 

The governor’s husband, a jovial man named Duvelys, chatters happily with Rey as he leads her through the mansion’s residential wing. “It’s so lovely that he has some company now, he’s always been such a lonely thing. Xancay’s known him for years. They were in the same secret society in college,” he adds by way of explanation, as if Rey knows what that means, “And of course it was such a point of contention during the campaign—not having someone to stand at his side and support him. But here you are, and we couldn’t be happier. Which of _course_ shouldn’t have mattered, but you know the media, always making a mountain out of a molehill.” 

“Was it really that much coverage?” Rey asks. Her heart aches for him, imagining everyone focusing on how alone he was during the campaign.

“Oh, well, you know how these things are,” Duvelys says, clearly unaware that Rey has no idea how these things are, “The left will sling mud about everything they can in the final days. Make it look like if he doesn’t have a soulmate, then he must not have a soul because they can’t convince the centrists that he might have the wrong vision of the country.” He stops a few feet away from a door with two praetorian guards stationed outside it. “This will be your home for the evening,” he smiles.

“Thank you,” Rey says with a smile.

“If you need anything, just give a holler. Unless Xancay stole him for something, I believe the President should already be in there preparing for dinner.” And he disappears with a happy wave and Rey watches him go, her heart hammering in her chest.

“Everything ok?” Bazine asks her, raising her eyebrows. 

“That’s—that’s my room?”

“Yes,” Bazine says sounding confused and Rey watches as she connects the dots. “Oh god. There’s only one room.” And she immediately is marching back down the hall towards Duvelys. “I’ll get it sorted.”

“No,” Rey blurts out. “No, it’s—it’s no trouble.”

Bazine raises an eyebrow and marches back to her. “Listen,” she says quietly. “People talk. And you didn’t want that lingerie not because you thought it was opulent, but because you weren’t thinking about sex yet. If you stay in that room, people will assume, and there’ll be no walking back from it. And while that’s not to say they’re not already assuming, I just want to be clear with you what that means.”

Rey swallows. 

“They’ll assume it no matter what,” she says. “Duvelys certainly did. Like you said. I’m living in the Residence. Everyone—everyone already assumes that we…”

Bazine nods. “Then I’m going to let you make decisions about your own love life. You’re a big girl. That’s your room.”

And she turns back to the elevators and her own room. 

Rey takes a deep breath and opens the door. 

It’s a very nice room, which doesn’t surprise her at all. Like the bedrooms in the Glass Palace, the furniture all looks old, and elegant, and there’s lovely art hanging from the wall. And there’s only one bed.

The shower is running and she knocks on the shower door. “Ben?” she asks softly.

The water turns off.

“Everything ok?” he asks her through the door.

“Yes,” she calls. “I mean—I just—” she hears him moving around and a moment later—

He’s standing there in the fluffiest white towel and that’s it and her mind just sort of shorts out.

His chest is positively sculpted, wide and muscular, and his abs—he has abs that just sort of—

“Rey?”

“They only booked us one room,” she says, still staring at his chest. She’s seen chests before. She’s seen muscled chests before. She’s seen abs. She’s always appreciated them but they’ve never made her want to lick her way across it the way she does right now.

“Oh,” Ben says. “I can talk to—”

“No, it’s fine,” she says looking up at him. “Unless—unless you—”

She doesn’t even have time to think about looking Bazine in the face again if Ben does want a different room for her, if he’s not ready for this because a moment later he’s saying, “No, I—this is fine. I’d like that.”

“Ok,” she says. “Good.” 

“Do you want the shower?” he asks her. 

“Are you done?”

“I was just thinking. I can do that anywhere.” He blushes a little bit and steps aside and lets Rey pass him. The door clicks shut behind her and she undresses and gets into the shower and takes a deep breath. _Ok. So he’s hot._

Very hot. That chest.

How the _fuck_ does he have that chest if he works that much? Surely he doesn’t have time to spend hours in the gym. Does he take meetings in the gym? 

Unbidden, the image of him spending lonely nights lifting weights fills her mind and her throat tightens. 

She grabs the bar of soap from the soap dish and begins to clean herself. She doesn’t shower for very long and then wraps a towel around her hair and around her midriff and goes out into the bedroom. Ben’s wearing a nice suit and he nods towards the closet. “Bazine came in with a dress for you,” he says. “She also said you had to make sure to blowdry your hair and if you didn’t know how to do it, you should let her know and she’d do it.” He looks amused.

“I know how to blow dry my hair,” Rey mutters, never having done it in her life. It couldn’t be that hard though, could it?

It...is less easy than she expected. Her hair keeps going places and it takes her a while to work out how to hold both her hairbrush—a new one Bazine had gotten her—and the hotel’s hairdryer at the same time but in the end she doesn’t think it looks _too _terrible. Especially if she puts it up using one of the fancy clips that Bazine had gotten her, telling her that she was _not_ allowed to wear hairties to functions. 

Then she opens the garment bag and takes a deep breath.

She had picked this dress. It’s a nice blue sheath dress that had looked demure on the model but now that it’s in front of her is _surely_ going to be too tight. 

It’s quite tight. She doesn’t need a bra—no matter what Bazine says—but she _really_ doesn’t need one in this dress. 

And no matter how much she pulls her underwear up her butt or down to the crevice of her hips, she can see the line there, and how many magazines had she seen that mocked celebrities their pantylines?

So, grimacing, she wriggles her underwear off and looks at herself in the mirror.

“Right,” she says aloud.

The woman in the mirror looks terrified, her hazel and black eyes staring at Rey as though needing someone to save her. She’s trapped in a tight blue dress in no underwear and is going to share a bed with the President when she gets back from this dinner tonight.

And she should probably put on makeup too.

-

The dinner itself is a blur. She’s at Ben’s side the whole time and they keep talking about deficit reductions and apparently there’s someone who’s job title is the “whip” and Rey’s going to have to ask what on earth that means later because she doesn’t want to look stupid in front of the governor of Mimban. His husband is very nice, though, asking Rey all sorts of questions about how she’s liking the capital, and has she had a chance to see the sites yet, and she gets the sense that it’s him and not the governor who had insisted that the evening be casual because there’s something canny to his eyes that probably guessed correctly that Rey would get spooked if there had been more than one set of silverware involved with dinner.

“This is probably a whole world away from where you thought you’d ever end up,” smiles Devulys as Ben's and the governor’s conversation winds from the upcoming tax reform vote to speculating as to whether the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court will retire and Ben might be able to nominate someone during this term. 

“A little,” Rey says. She likes the way Ben looks as he talks with the governor. There’s a casual ease that just comes from knowing what you’re talking looks good on him. “The sort of thing you don’t even let yourself dream about.” She chances a smile.

“A reward for all the hard work you’ve done,” Devulys says with a benevolent smile and Rey pauses. That’s a…weird way phrase it.

“What’s work got to do with it?” Rey asks. It had been luck—luck and fate. That’s what soulmates were, right? _Work_ certainly had nothing to do with it. Everyone deserves to find their soulmate. 

“Well,” Devulys says and he looks suddenly uncomfortable. He’s glancing at his husband, who is too deep in conversation with Ben to have noticed what’s being said across the table. “I meant more that—clearly you’ve worked hard. You deserve some payoff for that.”

Rey lets out a wry laugh that makes Devulys look even more uncomfortable. “In my experience working hard and getting payoff aren’t exactly connected.” Devulys’ eyes go wide and he looks at his husband again. “If the people who worked hard got what they deserved, Jakku wouldn’t be the way it is. People work hard there, and not for nearly enough payoff.” 

“Yes, but surely—surely you’re not implying that you don’t deserve this?”

“Just that it has nothing to do with how hard I’ve worked. That has nothing to do with finding my soulmate.”

“Perhaps not,” Devulys says, relaxing. “It’s just—well, it’s not my area of expertise, I suppose.” He glances, once again, at his husband and this time, Rey gets the sense that he’s implying something. Actually that he’s implying a lot. But she has no idea what. The only thing she’s sure of is that he’s trying to get out of the conversation, that he wishes he hadn’t brought it up at all, and now he’s feeling deeply uncomfortable.

“What’s that?” the governor asks, smiling over at them.

“Oh, just talking about hard work,” smiles Devulys, but there’s almost a look of panic in his eyes.

“Payoff for hard work only?” the governor says, smiling at Ben and _that_ has got to mean something. That seems like it’s something that Ben might have said, or that he might believe. Rey wishes that she remembered the details of that frantic holonet search even more now. Maybe Devulys had said it as a subtle way of showing support for Ben, and Rey had missed it completely because she doesn’t remember enough about what had made him actually run for office.

She tucks it away for later, though. She can’t very well ask him about it now. And it can’t matter too much, can it?

They leave before it’s too late, and Ben’s on the com with the Energy Secretary the moment they make it back up to their hotel room. Rey brushes her teeth, washes her face (with face soap!) and goes out to her suitcase to find her pajamas while Ben wraps up his com. 

Rey frowns.

There’s clothes for tomorrow, a raincoat in case it rains, several pairs of shoes, socks, underwear...but no pajamas.

“Oh come on,” she mutters to herself. Threepio, kind Threepio, had completely forgotten her pajamas.

She should have packed herself.

Or did Bazine just not get her pajamas to begin with? She can’t remember having gone over them in the datapad shopping of yesterday morning, and she’d worn her own pajamas the first night. But if they hadn’t survived a clothing purge…

What if Threepio just thought she wanted to sleep naked?

With the President?

She groans.

“What’s wrong?” Ben asks, coming up behind her, resting his hand on the small of her back.

“Threepio forgot to pack my pajamas,” she says. She straightens up and blushes as she looks at him. He nods as though the action is paining him, and swallows, and does this thing with his mouth that makes him look like he’s biting back something nervously.

Then he tugs off his own pajama shirt and hands it to her and between that gesture and the fact that his chest is right in her face again, Rey’s sort of numb as she extends a hand to take the shirt.

Which is how she finds herself in bed, under the blankets, next to her soulmate, the President of the New Galactic Republic, wearing only her underwear and his t-shirt.

And she doesn’t feel even a little bit tired. Not even remotely close to a little bit tired, despite having barely slept the night before.

They’re just lying there, not touching, and she can tell from his breathing that he’s not close to sleeping either. When she peeks at him sideways, his eyes are open and staring at the ceiling and his arms are crossed over his chest.

A night ago, he’d pressed her into the mattress, then kissed her, then run off.

And now this.

Everything is moving so fast—so much faster than she’d thought it would.

If the past two days hadn’t been the past two days, she would wonder if he wanted her there at all from the defensive nature of it all. But even as the thought crosses her mind, it’s laughable to her. He wants her there—just as much as she wants him there.

Which is probably why she blurts out, “Are you nervous about all this?”

His breath catches slightly and she feels him shift on the bed and there—there are his fingers, brushing against her arm. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous in my life,” he says. 

“I’m nervous, but I’m not afraid. I don’t even understand that,” she says and she twists on her side to look at him. He’s watching her, his eyes black in the darkness. “Like—I’m nervous about—about—”

“Don’t be afraid—I feel it too,” he whispers and he sighs. “Years and years of loneliness, of not knowing if the next person you meet’s going to be—”

“—exactly—”

“—and then suddenly there you are and the one thing I feel sure of is that you feel the way I do, and yet I’m so scared that something I do or say and you’ll be gone.” His voice almost breaks. 

“I’m here,” she whispers.

“I’m here too,” he replies and his fingers twine with hers.

“And I don’t know you, but I do,” she says and he nods and he shifts closer to her, pressing his lips to hers again. 

And that’s it.

Rey sighs into his mouth, opening her lips for his tongue and pulling him closer. 

His hips are still angled away from her, but he’s breathing hard as his tongue delves into her mouth, deep and long and in that moment Rey is glad of one thing:

That she’s in this bed with him right now, not even a little bit tired.

His lips against hers, his breath on her skin, his hands tripping her arms, her shoulders, her hips—trying to find purchase while also not quite bringing his hips to line up with hers the way she wants him too. She feels like she’s breathing deeply for the first time when he sucks on her neck. She feels like she’s alive.

“Ben,” she hears herself moaning. 

“Fuck,” is his reply, which makes her laugh and drag his lips back to hers, and she sucks on the lower one as she pushes him onto his back and straddles him, bending down over him in his own t-shirt and kissing his jawline, her hair falling into her face so she has to sit up and try and tug it back so that it doesn’t get into their mouths.

Ben’s staring at her like she’s the moon.

“You in my shirt,” he half-moans up at her and all she can think is that that—that sound right there is better than any reaction to lingerie. Primal, and hungry, and emotional, and loving all at once. It makes her feel like she’s a goddess, like she’s brought him to his knees, and she grins down at him before leaning forward again. 

“Me in your shirt,” she murmurs in his ear, nipping lightly at his earlobe and she slides her hips down his torso just a little bit and—

He’d gotten an erection in the transport yesterday when they’d been kissing one another senseless. She’s not surprised even at all that she feels him, hot and thick and heavy, against her ass through his pajama pants and her underwear. She grins into his lips as she rubs herself lightly against him and he makes a noise somewhere between a groan and laugh, a long breath broken up into shorter pieces, as she does so. “Rey,” he moans. “Oh fuck—I—”

And he twists them back around, pressing her into the bed once again, her legs snapped around his hips this time and his cock between them now, slipping along the seam of her underwear as he grinds his hips into her. “I can’t believe you’re real,” he moans. “I can’t—I—”

“Ben.”

“Rey.”

Her arms are clinging to him, her hands roaming his bare back, memorizing the contours of his muscles as her—his—shirt rides up her belly, up and up and up, heat sending shivers across her skin as his stomach presses against her stomach and she can feel the trail of his hair against her abdomen.

Distantly, vaguely, she remembers Finn talking about the first time he and Rose were alone together, about the way he hadn’t known skin could feel this way, about how everything had felt different with her than it had ever felt with anyone else. This had been before he had stopped talking about firsts with his soulmate, before Rey had stopped being able to hide her pain that she was alone. 

He’d been right though.

She hadn’t known her skin could feel this way, her stomach, her arms, her lips. She feels like her lungs are breathing the air differently as she gasps and sighs and his erection between her legs makes her feel more and more and more like she’s going to fall apart.

She hadn’t known her heart could beat like this, hadn’t known her eyes could see like this. All her senses are flaring to life in a way she had never known or understood or suspected. Her name sounds different on his lips than it’s ever sounded before. 

And then, suddenly, he’s whimpering, groaning, cursing, and going very still and it takes her a moment, to realize that the wetness she’s now feeling isn’t the smooth damp of her own underwear, but spreading through the cotton of his sleeping pants.

He’s pressing kisses into her neck, and she can feel his heart hammering against his ribs as she holds him. His breathing is unsteady, not quite gasping, not quite panting and slowly he rolls off her and is staring at the ceiling again, one arm thrown wide across the bed, while the fingers of the other twitch towards Rey as though trying to do their best to find her hand again, given his state of mind.

Rey curls against him and kisses his neck. There’s something unexpectedly delightful about having made him come in his pants like that, that he couldn’t control himself because of her.

“Sorry,” he mutters at last.

“Don’t be,” she says, propping herself up on her elbows and kissing him. He draws her lower lip into his mouth and the hand that had been rubbing itself against her arm slips slightly lower, along the top of her underpants.

“Can I make it up to you?”

Her breath hitches and she looks at him. She’d expected, from his constant need to apologize, that he’d be pleading, begging, needing to make it better. But instead she sees something else in his face—that same hunger from before. _It’s just us now, _she thinks, remembering what he’d said in the park the other day. And when it’s just them—nothing else, no one else—everything is easy.

“If you must,” she sighs playfully, and he’s sitting up, kissing her, his fingers dipping down beneath the cotton of her underpants.

She should have expected—but couldn’t quite be prepared for…

If the skin of her stomach had felt more sensitive to contact with his abdomen, she should have known that any part of him touching her cunt would leave her breathless, speechless. His fingers ghosting over her slick slit before dipping into it and curling upwards—nothing in the world is like it. Nothing. She thinks she chokes out his name. It would make sense if she had. All she knows is her blood is coursing through her body, her heart is slamming in her chest and as he kisses his way down her stomach and tugs her underwear down her legs, her mind is rioting because his lips keep getting lower and lower and—

“This ok?”

She is pretty confident she replies, just not sure that the word is anything remotely close to basic. It doesn’t seem to be in any recognizable language, and Ben chuckles and she can feel his breath—his breath is just—his mouth is so—

Close.

Her back arches the moment his tongue touches her and this is unreal, this isn’t possible to have a physical reaction like this. It’s not. She’s touched herself before, she’s brought herself off, it had taken nearly an hour of foreplay with her fingers to get even half of what’s searing its way through her body right now from one light touch of his tongue. There isn’t enough room in her lungs for her breath as she gasps. There isn’t enough air in the world to make her feel as though she’s not about to fall into something she’ll never recover from.

There was no way Finn could have warned her about this, about how Ben’s tongue would make her feel as she cries out, her body convulsing around his fingers for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds before everything is still again.

Still and quiet and warm as she lies there, wholly dazed and Ben crawls back up the bed. His breath is hot against her neck as he kisses her and she lets herself melt into it, her eyes drifting closed.

She doesn’t even realize she’s falling asleep until she’s already mostly there.

And if she hears him whisper, _I love you_...well, if it’s a dream, then it’s a good dream.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi y'all thanks for your patienceeeee enjoy this chapterrrrrrrrrr
> 
> also so many thanks to the lovely n1ff1n for [the moodboard](https://shmisolo.tumblr.com/post/187777475902/n1ff1n-fanfiction-aesthetics-dear-mr).

The comlink is going off and she hears Ben growl into the phone. “What? Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

Rey doesn’t stir. She just lies there, her eyes still closed, a faint smile on her lips. She can’t remember the last time she slept this deeply. She can’t remember feeling warm and safe like this.

Ben nuzzles his face into her neck and whispers, “Good morning.”

“Hi,” she replies.

“You don’t have to wake up,” he tells her. “But I do.”

“Ok,” she replies.

He kisses just along her jaw, but does not move.

“What time is it?”

“Five.”

“Your wake-up time is going to be the death of me,” she jokes and he kisses her neck again. Finally, she twists and presses herself against him, her arms slipping around her neck, and his eyelids flutter closed because she’s trapped another erection between them.

She kisses him lazily. His breath isn’t great and she’s sure hers isn’t either, but she doesn’t care. That makes all this that much more real. Just the two of them in their own little bubble before he has to drag himself away from her again.

He does drag himself away. He kisses her as he pulls his body away from her slowly, as he untwines her arms from his neck. He cups her face in his hand before disappearing to the bathroom and a shower and Rey lies there feeling winded and warm.

Her underpants hadn’t made it back up her legs the night before. She feels them around one of her ankles.

When she drifts awake again, the room is empty, and lighter. The curtains are open and—

Rey sits bolt upright. Bazine is sitting on one of the sofas, flicking through a datapad.

“Morning,” she says idly.

“What are you doing here?” Rey sputters.

“The President said to make sure you were awake in time for the flight, which is now in two hours.”

Rey glances at the chrono on the bedside table. It’s noon.

She had slept until noon.

“Sleep well?” Bazine asks. If it were Finn asking, there’d be an evil grin. Rose would be snickering. But Bazine sounds almost bored.

“Yeah,” Rey says, trying very hard see if there’s a subtle way she can put her underpants back on. There’s no way to avoid Bazine seeing she’s wearing Ben’s shirt, but at least she can put her underpants back on. “Didn’t get a lot the night before.”

“That’s good,” Bazine says, still looking at the datapad. Rey shimmies the underpants up her leg, and does her best to slip it under her ass while Bazine is occupied. “Get what sleep you can.”

There’s a knock on the door and Bazine goes and answers. Rey sees a tray like the one that Threepio had brought in and Bazine gestures the server towards a table while Rey continues to sit on the bed, waiting.

There are fluffy scrambled eggs and a bowl of freshly cut fruit and Rey’s stomach grumbles just looking at them.

“They’re for you,” Bazine points out. “I’ve already eaten.”

Which is what makes Rey finally get out of bed and go over to the table and begin eating her breakfast.

“There’s a fundraiser for the New Galactic Consortium of Medicine on Centaxday that will be hosted at the Glass Palace,” Bazine tells her as she eats. “It’s a non-partisan event, and I suspect that’s when the President plans to let the lions have at you.”

“What does that mean—let the lions have me?” Rey asks carefully. She doubts very much that Ben would throw her to the dogs—he’d said as much. But Bazine finally looks up from her datapad.

“That means you’re no longer embargoed. He won’t be able to hold everyone back forever, and everyone—the press, lobbyists, politicians, socialites—_everyone_ wants to know you.”

“Why?” Rey asks.

“Because you’re access,” Bazine says. “You have his attention more than anything else at the moment—and certainly more than anyone else ever will. God knows sucking up to his parents doesn’t work. But you…” her eyes glint as she looks at Rey. “You’re the golden ticket. Either to their glory or his destruction. So they want to know you. And he can’t keep them at bay without raising every possible hackle on the planet.”

“What if I requested it?” Rey asks slowly.

“No one will believe that,” Bazine replies, sounding as sympathetic as Rey thinks she’s capable of sounding. “There are already far too many people who find him abrasive and are more than willing to paint him into the villain he’s not at your expense. _Poor little Rey, the damsel in distress who must be protected from the Wicked President Solo, her fated soulmate.”_ Bazine rolls her eyes. “Bantha poodoo. You don’t need protecting from him. You need protecting from _them_, but there’s no armor in the world that can save you from the ills of society, so here we are.”

“Yeah, I know that much,” Rey says and Bazine gives her a look. A curious glint shines in the other woman’s eyes, and it’s the first time that Rey notices that the black is flecked with gold. _What’s her soulmate like? _Rey wonders. “It’s not like I’ve never had my ass handed to me by society.”

To her surprise, Bazine smiles. “Good,” she says.

“What?”

“There’s only so much I can help you with. If you’re a pushover and can’t defend yourself….” she shrugs. “I can’t tell you every word to say in every conversation you have.”

“I can take care of myself,” Rey says. “Look, just because I don’t know the difference between…” she can’t even think of an example from the different face creams Bazine had given her the other day, “doesn’t mean I haven’t had my fair share of bantha poodoo to deal with.”

“Very well then,” Bazine says. “I was thinking this sort of a dress for the fundraiser.” She turns the datapad around. It’s white and simple and probably a finer fabric than it looks in the picture. But most importantly: it is stunning. And it looks distinctly like…

“Doesn’t white imply marriage?” Rey asks slowly.

“Honey, your eyes changed color. Isn’t marriage only a technicality at that point?” Bazine retorts. “You’re wearing his t-shirt and the state of that bed isn’t one where you were sleeping like a nun.”

Rey wouldn’t be surprised if her face went purple and she looks back down at the dress.

There’s a long slit up one of the legs, and it looks extremely flowy in a completely impractical way. The neckline is high on her chest but the back drips down almost all the way to the model’s ass.

“Isn’t it a bit…”

“If you got it, flaunt it. You’re nine years younger than him, thin, muscular, and beautiful. I’m not going to put you in something that pretends you’re anything other than that. If you have something that you think fits you better, fine, but I don’t think you know your way around a ball gown just yet. Maybe in six months, but not yet.”

“You’re a piece of work,” Rey mutters into her toast.

“Thank you,” Bazine says, and actually sounds like she takes it as a compliment. “Anyway, do you have something you’d prefer to wear?”

“No,” Rey grumbles.

“Excellent. I’ll get one over for fitting this week. You should shower and put some makeup on your neck because there will probably be press on one end of the flight or the other and if you don’t _want_ to look freshly fucked, better not to show up with a hickey the size of Tattooine on your neck.”

Rey slaps a hand to her neck where Ben had been kissing it, then tears off to the bathroom.

It’s not a dark hickey but it is a large one and she stares at it for a full minute before muttering “Fuck,” and stripping off Ben’s t-shirt.

She showers, and does her best to remember what kind of powder was the right thing to use for this sort of blemish as Bazine leans against the bathroom door. “For what it’s worth, you bruised him like a banana too, but he gets to wear collared shirts right up to his chin and you don’t. Or—it’s not your style yet. We could work with it, but I think it would be too severe on you.” Then she takes the makeup brush out of Rey’s hand and dabs at her neck for her. “There, that’ll do,” she says before leaving the bathroom for Rey to get dressed.

-

Ben has meetings on the shuttle, coms with his senior staff and Mitaka that all take place behind closed doors. Rey sits in a comfortable chair and wishes desperately that she had something—anything—to do with her hands. Everyone on the shuttle seems to be doing something. People are talking, bent over computers, or walking briskly back and forth and conversing quietly.

Rey is sitting in a cabin by herself. Bazine had gone off to do whatever it was that Bazine does, and part of Rey misses her, but also, Bazine isn’t her babysitter. No one is.

But here she is again, waiting for Ben to have a moment for her.

Which is why she ends up getting to her feet and asking one of the stewards if there’s a notebook and a pen she can use. The steward produces one with the seal of the President—leather-bound with an elastic to keep it closed. The pen is a shitty ballpoint pen, but it will do.

_Dear Mr. President, _Rey writes. _I wish you didn’t have the job you have. It makes it hard to breathe sometimes. In the past few days the only time I’ve really felt like I can breathe is when you help me forget that you’re the President._

She pauses. Her thoughts are a jumble, and she feels guilty even putting these thoughts to words. But it’s not like she’s actually going to give him this notebook. This is for her. This is for her and she’s just _waiting_, like she always seems to be. So she keeps going.

_I hate waiting. _

_I waited so long for my parents, and they never came back for me. I kept thinking they would. Finn helped me realize that they wouldn’t. I know you’ll be back when you’re done with your meetings. (I hope you will meet Finn soon. He’s my very best friend and I want you to know one another.)_

_I very much feel what you said last night, by the way. As I was falling asleep._

_I don’t know if you actually said it. Maybe I just imagined it because I wanted you to say it because I was feeling it too._

_You listen to me. _

_You make me feel like I matter._

_And I wish we had more time together (as if we didn’t only meet a few days ago) because I want to know everything about you but your job keeps getting in the way._

_So please, Mr. President, don’t forget to schedule me in._

_I don’t like waiting at all._

Tears drip down her nose at the last two lines. Part of her wants to scratch the lines out.

She flips the page and begins to draw, which she hasn’t done in ages, sketching the lines of Ben’s face. She’s usually bad at remembering facial features—she’d tried drawing Rose from memory once as a gift for Finn—but it’s like Ben’s seared into the back of her mind, his nose, his lips, his jaw—all of it. She’s quite pleased at the likeness before the Lieutenant Colonel flying the shuttle announces that they’re descending into Coruscant and everyone should buckle up.

Ben doesn’t join her in the cabin.

She opens the notebook back up to the first page and adds, _Please let’s figure out something so that I’m not always waiting for you. Please._

She closes her eyes for a moment and tries to remember the way she’d felt last night when she’d been in his arms, when she’d come apart under his tongue. She tries to remember how she felt that morning, waking up next to him, not wanting to let him go, having slept more deeply than she can remember ever having slept.

What a strange trip this had been. The visit to the youth home had been good, but awkward because she didn’t really understand what she was doing there. She’d felt like she was supposed to be someone important but really she felt like she had no right to be there. She wasn’t a facilitator, and she was too old to be one of the teens. And yet it was the most familiar space that she’d been in since leaving Jakku. Certainly more familiar than the governor’s mansion.

_Payoff for hard work only. _

She frowns. She wishes Bazine were there so she could ask her about it, but Bazine is off in some other part of the shuttle. She wonders if she can get a mobilecom—is she allowed to have one? She hasn’t seen Ben with one, and she certainly can’t _afford_ one on her own. Somehow she suspects Ben would get her one if she wanted one but that thought doesn’t sit right with her, somehow. The clothes on her back aren’t hers, the place she’s living in doesn’t feel like hers. If Bazine can’t get her one because Rey is…whatever she is, she’s not going to let Ben get her a com unless they have a serious conversation about it.

_He’ll want to provide for you._

_Payoff for hard work only._

_What_ had that even meant?

They land, and Rey tucks the notebook and pen into her purse and steps out into the main cabin of the shuttle. Ben’s already by portal and he reaches a hand out to her as she approaches. The moment she takes it, she feels better. It’s intoxicating, really. Being with him. It sends every other thought flying right out of her brain. He presses his lips to her temple. “Hi,” he murmurs. She can see a little bit of bruising peeking out from under his collar. She rubs her nose against it and he grins.

“I’ve cleared my schedule for the evening,” he tells her, his voice low.

“Oh yeah?” she asks him, suddenly extremely aware of how close Mitaka is standing to both of them.

“Yeah,” he replies. His fingers—those fingers of his—flit to the small of her back as he kisses her forehead again.

“Good,” she says, and leaves it at that. It’s like he was responding to her silly little letter without having read it at all. And the other questions—they can all wait until tomorrow, surely.

There are, as Bazine had promised, photographers waiting for them as they descend from the shuttle, hand in hand.

“Focus on me,” Ben tells her as the flashing and clicking of cameras hits her. So she does. She looks up at him and he looks down at her, and soon they’re getting into the transport and his lips are on hers and he’s pulling her into his lap.

“You’re all I’ve been able to think about all day,” he tells her neck and oh god she’s going to have more hickies there, isn’t she? Her entire neck is going to be black and blue and she doesn’t care because Ben’s lips feel so good, the way she’s grinding into him feels so good, the way his hands on her back, her ass, her sides—they feel so good.

“That so?” she asks.

“Yes,” he growls. “You and the way you taste,” and she whimpers a bit because he lifts his hips slightly under hers and fuck—_fuck_. “The way you looked after you came apart. The way you felt against me last night. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

And what he says next sends a shiver right through her.

“I want to be inside you. I want to feel you come on me. I want to come in you.”

Her breath catches in her throat as she imagines it, him spread out underneath her, his glorious chest his full lips panting and gasping and her watching the light of the sunset spread across his body to where they met. She rests her head against his even as his fingers slip up under her shirt.

“Do you have a condom?” she asks him and he freezes.

“Fuck,” he mutters and—just like the other day on their date, his head drops back on the seat rest. “I don’t even carry a fucking wallet. I can’t even go buy some.”

Rey can practically hear Bazine talking about what tabloid headlines would say if word got out that the President of the New Galactic Republic was buying condoms.

“Anyone you can ask to…”

“Yeah, I’ll get Thanisson to do it,” he says. “He’ll be subtle. He’ll keep us stocked.”

Rey doesn’t even know who Thanisson is, but that doesn’t bother her. “Good,” she tells him, looking down at him hungrily. She doesn’t want to wait, but she also knows enough to know that she doesn’t want to do any of this without a condom.

So she clambers slowly off his lap and leans her head on his shoulder and weaves her fingers through his, both breathing until the transport pulls up in the portico of the Glass Palace.

Ben gets out of the transport before extending his hand and helping her out. Then he nods to Rey that he’ll be just a moment and flags down a weedy looking young man who Rey can only assume is Thanisson. She goes inside and runs almost immediately into someone who looks oddly familiar, but Rey can’t place how she knows her.

“Rey,” the woman says with a bright warm smile. She has deep brown eyes, flecked with a lighter brown, and her hair is wrapped in braids around her head. “It’s so good to meet you.”

“And you,” Rey says pulling a smile onto her face. She is sure that she’ll want to know who this woman is, if she’s in the Glass Palace, and she’s even more sure that Bazine will be glad she didn’t put her foot in her mouth and ask _who are you?_

Maybe she should have taken note of the shade of brown in the woman’s eyes, or maybe that she’s the only person who’s called her “Rey” since she’s arrived apart from Ben. But somehow, it hits her like a transport when she hears Ben come through the doors behind her and say, clearly shocked to see her standing there—

“Mom?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slightly shorter chapter than the past few i think, but i had to end it with that moment i just had to! 
> 
> i....got bronchitis on vacation so made less headway with editing the whole thing than planned. BUT i think that i should still be able to pull off regular sunday updates moving forward \o/. believe it or not, that'll take us to past the release of TROS which sort of blows my mind.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hello sweetheart,” his mother says, stepping around Rey to give Ben a kiss on the cheek. He stoops so that she can reach her—she’s much, much shorter than he is.

Rey _really_ wishes she had paid attention during the election because she’s sure that they’d talked about Ben’s mom. She remembers from that quick search of the HoloNet the day she’d gotten her test results that his mom had been a senator. He’d said as much on their date too. But he’d assumed that Rey knew her name, because—well—why wouldn’t she?

Except she doesn’t.

She really doesn’t.

It had not been among the pieces of information she’d retained from that frantic search because she’d been an idiot and assumed she’d remember it. But it’s like she’s turning over all of the furniture in her and Finn’s and Rose’s trailer trying to find her keys but her keys are actually at the diner or something. She’s coming up with nothing.

“What are you doing here?” Ben asks and his mother gives him a little eyeroll.

“Well, if you weren’t going to invite us, we were absolutely going to invite ourselves,” she says. “She’s your soulmate, sweetheart. We want to meet her.”

Something about the way that his mother keeps calling him sweetheart makes Rey’s heart swell and twist. Her throat gets tight, her eyes prickle. He has a mother who loves him. Who wants to meet her.

“Here I am,” Rey says, smiling tentatively and his mother turns her attention back to her and she looks so overjoyed to meet Rey it makes her breath hitch in her throat.

“Here you are,” she agrees reaching a hand out and taking Rey’s. “I’m stealing her away, Ben. You’ve had the past few days to monopolize her.”

“I really haven’t,” Ben mutters, his frustration evident on his face, but his mother is already leading Rey away towards the Residence.

“Did you enjoy the trip?” she asks.

“It was good,” Rey mostly lies, trying to focus on the visit to the shelter that Bazine had arranged for her rather than the hours she’d spent waiting for Ben. “I’d never been to Mimban before. Never really been anywhere outside of Jakku before.”

“Well, all that’s going to change,” his mother replies. They’re standing by the elevator and Ben comes to stand with them. The change in his demeanor is almost startling. Moments before in the car, he’d seemed playful, warm, happy—now it’s like his face is a stormcloud.

The elevator opens and they get into it. The moment the doors shut, he says to his mother, “You know perfectly well I was going to invite you.”

“When?”

“When I got around to it,” he replies, and his mother’s eyes narrow.

“Having a little trouble prioritizing family over the job, are we?” she asks and Rey gets the sense from her tone that she’s referring back to an age-old conversation.

“It’s not the same and you know it,” he retorts. “You _know_ it.”

She shrugs and the door opens and she turns back to Rey. “Have you gotten to do anything fun since coming to the capital?”

Rey glances at Ben, but he brushes past them, heading towards the living room. His mother steers Rey there too, and Rey replies as carefully as she can. “Ben took me to the rose garden, and the art museum.”

“Which one?” she asks gently.

“I’m...there were flower paintings.” She flushes. She can’t actually remember. It was a huge building, with marble columns, but she somehow suspects that if she says that, his mother will only press further.

“Probably the National Gallery,” his mother says. “That’s a lovely one. And the rose garden is so beautiful this time of year.”

They’re in the living room now and she closes the door behind her. Ben is staring out a window, his hands jammed into his pockets.

“You can’t go accusing us of not caring about you and then not give us the opportunity to care about you when something major happens, Ben,” his mother says. “And then going and exploding when we actually show up because we care.”

“Where’s dad?” Ben demands. “And I’m not exploding.”

Rey wishes very much that she weren’t in the room right now.

“I can—” she begins, pointing towards the door, but both mother and son say, “No,” and she freezes.

Ben turns around and looks at her and takes a long slow breath. Then he turns to his mother. “It’s good to see you,” he says though he doesn’t quite sound like he means it. “It’s just been...more work than I’d like in the past few days.”

His mother nods. “I understand. I do. And believe it or not, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about as well. Please stop assuming I don’t care about you, or don’t want to help you, Ben. We’ve been through this.”

“Yeah,” he says sounding suddenly so defeated. “Yeah, ok.”

“I’ll get out of your hair tonight—I promise. Amilyn’s already said that she’d be happy to have your father and I over for dinner and—”

“No, you have to stay for dinner,” Rey hears herself saying. She doesn’t know anything about what’s going on but she doesn’t want the first night she meets Ben’s parents for them to be off with someone else and feel as though…

Ben looks at her and gives her a tight smile, his expression more than a little unreadable. “Yeah, you should stay,” he says. “Are you planning on staying here as well?”

“We have a hotel reservation, but we’re happy to stay here if you want,” his mother says quickly.

There is a long pause. “Please stay,” he says. “I do want you to get to know Rey.”

“I’ll have our things brought over,” his mother says at once.

“Where _is_ dad?” Ben asks.

“He and Chewie went to see that new exhibit at the Air and Space Museum. I think he wanted to avoid…” she raises her eyebrows significantly and Ben rolls his.

“Classic dad,” he mutters.

“He comes through when it’s important,” his mother says at once. “And this one was _definitely _my plan, so I think this is his way of doing an _it’s not my fault_,” she says, raising both hands and putting on a voice as if to deflect responsibility. Ben snorts derisively.

“Yup,” he agrees.

“There’s an Air and Space Museum?” Rey asks slowly and both of them turn to her.

And his mother’s eyes light up.

“Don’t let Han hear you asking about that or you’ll never hear the end of it. He loves shuttles and ships. And don’t get him started on transports. I think he’s rebuilt his transport about nine times since he got it fifty years ago.”

“What kind of transport?” Rey asks excitedly.

“Corellian YT-1300,” Ben and his mother say at the same time.

Rey feels her eyebrows rise in horror. “That’s…”

“A piece of junk?” Ben suggests with a grin.

“Garbage,” Rey agrees.

“If you say that to Han, he’ll go on a twenty minute rant about all the modifications he’s made, so please spare us all,” Ben’s mother says, rolling her eyes. So Rey files that away because while it’s well known that YT-1300s are garbage, she is actually curious about his modifications.

Ben’s mother cocks her head. “You used to work in a garage,” she said. It had been a week ago, but it feels like so much longer.

“Yes,” she says.

“I’m glad you and Han will have something to talk about,” she says smiling. “He can sometimes feel like a fish out of water when Ben and I get into knock-down drag-outs about politics.”

“What sorts of knock-down drag-outs?” Rey asks.

His mother leans back and looks at her son, who says with the air of a man who is trying and failing to be self-deprecating, “I’m the family disappointment.”

“You’re the President,” Rey blurts out.

“Yes, but I got elected from the right and think that this one,” he jerks his head at his mother, “and all she stands for is naïve and wrong.”

“Family dinners can be…” his mother says, letting her voice trail away diplomatically before looking at her son, who had been very frustrated with her not five minutes before and whom she clearly doesn’t want to set off again. “We’re proud of him. If not of his politics.”

“Always with the clarification,” he grumbles. “Even on national television.”

“Oh please, everyone would think I was lying if I said I supported half of your initiatives. I’m not going to lie to the public like that, and I’m certainly not going to lie to you like that. If you’re surrounded by bootlickers, Ben, get a new staff.”

“Oh really? This from the woman who had Amilyn Holdo as her Chief of Staff for the entirety of my life?”

“Are you calling Amilyn a bootlicker?” his mother asks, raising her eyebrows again.

“She’s your best friend, mom. Do you really think that she’s not going to—”

“She’s the sort of best friend who’ll tell me when my ass is hanging out in public, even if it hurts to hear. I’ll take that any day over a friend who only validates me.”

“So you want me to hire Hux is what I’m hearing,” Ben says and it isn’t until his mother says, “Don’t you fucking dare,” that Rey sees a humorous glint in his eyes.

“I’m fairly certain the man would try to murder me in my sleep, sounds like I should hire him. He’ll certainly tell me if my ass is hanging out in public,” Ben continues, grinning.

“Don’t even joke about that because it’s the truth,” his mother groans. “I can’t believe he got reelected,” and they’re off talking about last year’s election and Rey does her best to follow—she really does.

But that little problem persists—that she’s never cared once in her life about politics—and so trying to understand what they’re talking about when they discuss electoral math and voter registration-to-participation rates makes her feel…

Well, it makes her feel like she didn’t go to college, like she didn’t even finish high school, like she worked two jobs back to back until she was so tired she could drop. She knows she’s heard of some of the regions that Ben and his mother bring up, but like Mimban she couldn’t for the life of her place them on a map, much less remember the last six senators they’d had off the top of her head.

She tucks her knees up under her chin as they both talk. Ben’s still standing, his mother is sitting on the couch, and Rey’s in a tall armchair, the only one facing the door, which is how she notices the man who slips in in a leather jacket and blue button-down. She sees Ben in the length of his face.

She shifts slightly and the man gives her a smile and a nod.

“These two talking shop?” he asks her, quietly and she nods.

“How was the museum?” Ben’s mother asks at once.

“It was good,” he says, as he steps into the room and holds out a hand for Rey to shake. “Han Solo.”

“Rey,” she replies smiling as she shakes Ben’s father’s hand.

“Good to meet you,” he says and he sits down on the sofa next to Ben’s mother—Rey _really_ needs to work out her name—and looks up at his son. “How you doing, kid?”

Ben’s face twists into a wry smile, and she can see on his face that _I haven’t been a kid in thirty years _is warring with _hi dad._

“Pretty good,” Ben says, and his dad smiles and glances at Rey who does her absolute best not to turn bright red. She knows—she _knows_—that the comment isn’t necessarily about sex. She knows that it’s probably related to the way they’d felt when they’d first touched hands, a sense of not being alone, a sense of optimism. But she can’t help but think about how he’d just sent Thanisson to get condoms for them and how, as Bazine had pointed out, everyone probably assumes they’re already fucking….which they are.

“Good,” Han says. “Glad to hear it.”

Ben glances at Rey, and she’ll never get over his eyes—sweet and sincere and soft and flecked with her own. “Me too,” he whispers and everything is perfect.

-

A soft knock on Rey’s bedroom door as she’s getting dressed. She’s expecting it to be Ben, but it’s not. It’s his mother, standing there, also looking freshly showered.

“Hello,” Rey says a little breathily.

“Hello dear,” she says, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. “I just wanted to say—earlier—” she takes a deep breath, “Ben and I...there’s a past there. And it’s hard and we both know that. And sometimes it comes out and I don’t want you to think that I don’t love him.”

“I don’t think that,” Rey says automatically. She remembers the way that his mother had kissed his cheek.

“Good,” his mother says. “And I also wanted to say again—I’m so happy to meet you, to have you be a part of his and my life. I’ll be honest, none of us were expecting it. He put his information in the databank years ago—before he even ran for Congress.”

“I didn’t know that,” she says quietly. Ben hadn’t told her.

His mother nods. “It was...when we weren’t talking to one another.” Ben hadn’t told her that either. “But I’m sure that it’s something he’d mention at some point. I keep forgetting you’ve only known one another a few days and there’s only so much you can tell someone in that time, especially when you have Ben’s schedule.”

Rey nods. Yes, that must be the truth of it. She hadn’t asked him much about his family. It’s hard asking people about families sometimes, when you don’t have one yourself.

“Anyway,” his mother continues. “I just wanted to say that before we all had dinner.”

And then Rey gets an idea.

“Thank you, Senator,” she says.

And Ben’s mother’s face changes. The earnest politeness fades into a soft amusement. “Please—call me Leia.”

It had worked. Rey could cry with relief.

“Thank you, Leia,” she says.

And Leia takes her arm and the two of them go into the dining room that she’d had dinner with Ben in the first night, now set for four people.

Rey sits down next to Ben, who takes her hand under the table. That familiar warmth spreads through her, and she gives him a smile.

“We’ll be staying through the fundraiser tomorrow night,” Leia tells Ben as they dig into a salad with some of the freshest vegetables that Rey’s ever touched. “I was thinking that if you are busy tomorrow, I could take Rey out to see more of the town.”

Ben glances at Rey. “Up to Rey,” he says simply.

“I’d like that,” Rey replies.

“Wonderful,” Leia says happily. “I hate the idea of you sitting there all alone.”

Ben shifts uncomfortably and glances at Rey. She can see more _I’m sorry_ in his eyes. She squeezes his hand reassuringly, even as she thinks of the little letter she’d written in that notebook.

“We’ll need to make sure that the praetorian guard is properly involved in the plan,” he says to his mother. “But as far as I’m aware, I’m not leaving the Palace tomorrow, so they can probably spare a few from my detail.”

“Hers isn’t set up?” Leia asks sharply.

“Nearly there,” Ben replies, his tone clipped once again. Then he turns to his father, clearly trying to change the subject. “You got any plans, dad?”

Han shifts a bit uncomfortably. “Seeing Luke,” he says and Ben’s face tightens.

“Have fun,” he replies, his tone tighter than she'd heard it since they got back.

_Who’s Luke? _Rey wonders.

There are so many things she wants to ask, but doesn’t want to do it in front of his parents. There are so many things she feels she should have already asked. He had, after all. He’d listened to her in the park, and made her feel so very safe. And yes, he had told her some of what his life had been, but she hadn’t asked about other things, and now the list of things she wants to know just gets longer and longer because time with him is just more limited than she would like. How many things is she going to have to ask him in the spare few minutes she has with him? And how many of those is she going to forget to ask him because whenever he touches her, all she can think about is how warm and safe and happy she is that he’s there and that everything else can wait?

_I will tonight, _she thinks. She wants to be in his bed with him, but talking to him feels more important. And besides, his parents are going to be down the hall. It might be better if they don’t just yet. You’re not supposed to do that sort of thing when your parents are right down the hall, right? Or are you supposed to because it feels thrilling, daring? She doesn’t have parents, and neither had Finn, and Rose had lost hers young. She doesn’t have any idea how all this is supposed to go.

“How have your friends been taking all this?” Leia asks Rey next.

“I haven’t had much time to talk to them,” she replies, guilt flooding her. She’d caught Finn at work, but hadn’t spoken to Rose at all. “I think they’re...well they’re happy for me,” she says and gives Ben a small smile. “But it’s a big change.”

“It is,” Leia agrees. “You should invite them out, show them around the city.”

“I don’t think they could afford the tickets,” Rey says uncomfortably. She knows they couldn’t, in fact. Finn’s still paying off his hospital bills from that transport accident.

“I’m sure that something could be arranged,” Leia says, her eyes leaving Rey’s face and going to her son’s.

“Definitely,” Ben says. His eyes are on Rey and it’s not until later, when his parents have excused themselves to bed, and he and Rey are standing outside her bedroom door that he says, “I should have thought to invite your friends out with you. You shouldn’t have had to be alone.”

Her heart tightens in her chest when he says it and she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him.

“It was an easy thing to overlook,” she says.

“Yes, but—”

“It’s all right,” she tells him again.

“I’ll have someone arrange for them to visit. They’ll need to undergo background checks, but we will get them out as soon as we can after that.”

“Thank you,” she says and his fingers brush just under her eyes, which is how she realizes she’s tearing up. He kisses her cheek, where he’d pulled the tear away, then rests his forehead against hers.

“I know this isn’t perfect,” he tells her. “I know it’s—”

“No, it’s fine,” she says.

“It’s not,” he says almost brutally. “But I’m doing all I can.” He sounds suddenly desperate, the way he had the other night when he’d told her he was sorry and then fled. He kisses her again, holding her close to chest, his breath a little shaky, a little frightened, and as much as Rey would like to be distracted by his lips, by the way he feels against her, by the memory of this afternoon in the transport before his parents had arrived, she says into his lips.

“Let’s talk.”

He goes very still and she takes his hand. She kisses his cheek again and leads him—not into her bedroom, but down the hall to his. They slip inside together and she kicks off her shoes and climbs onto his bed.

“What is it?” he asks her, sounding so hard as though he’s trying not to be nervous. He’s still standing and she pulls him so that he’s sitting on the bed next to her.

She doesn’t know where to begin—the things she’s noticed, the things that are. So she starts with.

“Who is Luke?”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“Luke?”

“Yeah.”

His jaw sets, his eyes harden. “He’s my uncle. My mom’s twin. Why?”

She reaches a hand up to cup his face and immediately it softens. “Because you made that face,” she says. “And you listened to me—you listen to me. And I want to listen to you.”

His eyes fill almost with wonder and go so very bright. His jaw starts to tremble. And then he’s kissing her, pushing her back down into the bed.

“Ben,” she murmurs into his lips, and he begins kissing his way down to her already hickeyed neck. “_Ben_.”

He rolls off her across the bed, loosening his tie and throwing it to the ground, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt. She can see the light bruising there from the night before now. He breathes in and out, staring at the ceiling overhead.

“Luke’s my uncle,” he says. “He is a political philosophy professor. And he thinks I’m a demon.”

Rey almost laughs. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Oh, it is,” Ben says darkly. “He thinks that I’m nothing short of a fascist and has refused to speak to me in...seven years? Eight? Can’t remember if it was my vote on some education policy that he hated or if it was something about the military. Doesn’t ultimately matter. He’s my dad’s best friend, and my mom’s twin, and he thinks I’m a demon.”

“You’re not a demon,” she tells him quietly, and he looks at her.

“No, I’m just the family disappointment. I fuck everything up, always, whether it’s because I believe in different political dreams than they do, or because I…” he swallows. “I almost broke up my parents’ marriage when I was younger. I was such a fuckup that it drove them apart. Do you know what it’s like, driving apart _soulmates_? Because I do.” His face is brutal, his grip in her hands so tight that it almost hurts her bones. “My mentor—my mom hates him. Like a lot. He’s not in the Senate anymore—neither is she—but they went toe to toe more than once. She thinks he corrupted me. Luke thinks that I was weak and fell on my own. And dad…” He takes a shaky breath. “Dad doesn’t care about politics at all. Cares about helping people, sure. He does the right thing most of the time. But he doesn’t give a shit about higher levels of power. Thinks nothing important happens up here. So either everything I care about is wrong, or they don’t care about it. And until a few days ago, I didn’t have the other topics of conversation to distract them from that with.”

“The other topics of conversation?”

Ben rolls onto his side and his fingers drift across Rey’s ribs. “How’s Rey? Do you two have anything nice planned for the holidays? When are grandkids coming?” Rey’s stomach does about twelve swoops at that but Ben continues without having noticed. “What does she want for her birthday?” Another swooping in her stomach. “How’s her new job going? Or classes? Or whatever it is you’re doing? Let’s all misdirect from the fact we think Ben’s a proto-fascist by talking about how he’s not alone anymore. Because we all love that he’s not alone anymore. Rey seems like such a sweet girl.” His face changes at once. “Which isn’t to say you’re not, or that I’m not glad you’re—”

“No, I get it,” she says and she rests her forehead against his.

“It’s just that it’s easier to talk about what you mean to me than anything else has ever been. They can understand that. They have each other. Whatever my politics, they’ve always...wanted me to have someone too. And now I do, and they can breathe easy and focus on that, since they haven’t been able to get me to change my mind about anything in years.”

“What do they want you to change your mind on?” She tries to keep the question casual.

“Everything,” he replies without missing a beat. Which isn’t a helpful answer at all.

“Ben,” she says gently and he continues briskly,

“The economy, role of the Federal government and states rights, tax policy, what to do about the deficit, national security—I mean it when I say everything.”

And that’s when Rey decides there’s no use pretending anymore. “Ben,” she says quietly. “I don’t know what your politics are. I never paid attention to them. So I don’t know what that all means.”

And he looks at her sharply and there’s something new in his eyes—defensive, probing, hard. “You don’t know what I campaigned on?”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t vote. I didn’t pay any attention at all.”

He nods slowly. “I mostly ran focusing on the economy. Trying to stimulate it, bring a boost to our market. Well—” and he snorts, “I _mostly_ ran so that I could show Hux I could beat him—which I did. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.” He grins at her and he looks so boyish in that moment—proud of himself, pleased at a successful gambit. “But there was a recession a few years ago.”

“Oh, I know,” Rey says darkly. Her stomach had never been so empty as it had been then. That’s when Finn had been dishonorably discharged as well and it had been hell for him to find a job. They’d both landed shitty part-time shifts at recycling plants because that was all there was.

Ben’s thumb trails across her wrist and she sees him watching her. He doesn’t have to say a word for her to see sympathy—pity—in his eyes. She grimaces. He grimaces back.

“Anyway—trying to get the economy back on track. Lower taxes, that sort of thing.”

“Lowering taxes sounds good,” Rey smiles at him and that’s when she sees it again, that defensive, probing look.

“Not for your tax bracket,” he says slowly.

“For which one?”

“The top one.”

“They can afford it though?”

“Lowering taxes on the rich stimulates the economy. It gives them buying power, which places demand on industry and—”

“That makes no sense at all,” Rey interrupts.

“It does, actually,” Ben says at once. “There’s a lot of writing on—”

“Why does their buying power mean more than mine?”

“Well they make more jobs which means that there’ll be more people who—”

“It’s late,” Rey sighs heavily. “And whatever stupid response you’re going to give me isn’t going to go in my head properly right now.” As if she hadn’t had the best night’s sleep she’d ever had the night before in his arms. “And it is stupid.”

“It’s not,” he replies and she doesn’t like the look in his eyes.

No, she hates the look in his eyes—fear and stubbornness and making himself numb to something she doesn’t understand.

“What are you afraid of?” Her voice is softer than she’d expected it to be. So different from the stubbornness of just a moment before.

He swallows.

“I’m scared I’m going to fuck up what I have with you before we even have something. Because if I can only fuck up what I have with my family—who are supposed to love me unconditionally—I can definitely fuck up what I have with my soulmate. I know that you can drive them apart because I saw what happened with my parents. And then you take my hand and everything soothes and I just know it’s going to be fine, but when I’m in meetings, I’m afraid that I’ll come out of them and you’ll be tired of me, or—or—” He swallows. “Or I’ll have done something that’ll push you away. That’s why I ran away the other night.” And he lets out a humorless laugh. “I was afraid.”

“You won’t push me away,” she says quietly. “I’ve wanted you for so long. Even before I knew you, I—I wanted not to be alone. And now you’re here, and you care about me, and you listen to me, and I know what we have will be strong.”

And he pulls her into his arms, crushing her mouth with his, his tongue swiping her lips, his breath hot against her face. “I believe that,” he says.

“When we touched hands,” she says between kisses, and he groans and rolls her onto her back again, “Ben I believe so intensely how that felt. You felt it too. Have faith in me—in us.”

“I do,” he promises her lips. “I will. I do.”

She fully expects the way they’re rolling around on his bed to escalate the way it has the past few times they’ve kissed like this—him hard against her, both of them panting and wanting.

But after a minute or two, his kisses slow.

“Everything ok?” she asks him quietly as he presses his forehead to hers, once again.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s just my parents are down the hall. And while I don’t think in the long run that matters, this time it does.”

She nods. “I’m gonna get into my pjs, then,” she says sitting up and turning to him. “And then come back?”

He sits up too, his lips on the back of her neck, his arms sliding around her waist. “Please come back,” he murmurs, his voice so low in his chest, and a shiver runs up her spine.

It’s hard to pull away from him after that but she does. She’s back as quickly as she can, wearing her extremely worn-out pajama bottoms and a tank top that had once belonged to Finn. Ben’s lying in bed already—also ready for sleep, and Rey clambers across it to cuddle against his chest.

She gets it now, though. _Payoff for hard work only. _She knows where that came from, who said it, what he must think couched beneath his stupid tax policies.

And even if cuddled up next to him, she feels warm, and safe, that doesn’t stop an icy chill from creeping across her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank you all so much for your reviews, and apologize for not having replied to them in...a while. Life's sort of nuts right now (work stuff) and I've just been having trouble getting to them. I am so so glad you all have enjoyed the past few chapters and I hope very much that you'll enjoy this one too (in fact, I'm decently confident you will!). Seriously—if the past few weeks have been hard, getting emails with your kind words and support has really done wonders for my head.
> 
> Thank you so much to the lovely and kind msdes for [the moodboard she made](https://twitter.com/crossing_winter/status/1188484535895367684) <3 
> 
> Lastly: all reference to Hapans/Dathomiri in this fic don't come from the Star Wars EU (because god knows I’ve read none of that, though thank you eternally to politicalmamaduck for pointing me in the right direction) they come from the glorious midrash that is [landscape with a blur of conquerors by diasterisms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11442951/chapters/25645101).

The comlink rings at an ungodly hour of the morning.

Rey knows that it’s an ungodly hour of the morning because it’s still dark outside, no light creeping under the edge of Ben’s curtains.

“Hello?” Ben grunts into the com, then, “Thank you.”

He takes a deep breath and presses a kiss to the top of Rey’s head. “Don’t wake up,” he whispers to her. She makes a half-whining sound as he pulls his chest out from under her head, doing his best to replace it with a pillow.

She doesn’t think she’ll go back to sleep, but a knock wakes her and it must be several hours later because there is light coming in from around the curtains this time.

“Yes?” she calls and a moment later Bazine is coming in.

“Morning,” she says.

Rey yawns and presses her face into the pillow.

“I brought you what you should wear out for your day in the city with the Senator,” Bazine tells her. “I took the liberty of picking the clothes.”

“You don’t have to dress me for everything I do like I’m a child,” Rey grumbles.

“I am going to for the next two weeks. Especially tonight for the fundraiser. You need to look perfect for that. Then I imagine the demands of the job will expand and either I will hire someone else to do it for me, or you will be given the opportunity to prove to me that you’re able to style yourself properly.”

“Do I work for you, or do you work for me?” Rey mutters, getting out of bed and going towards the bathroom to pee. Through the door, she hears Bazine say,

“Whether or not you like it, you now work for the people, and since I voted and am one of the people, you work for me.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Rey retorts.

“Neither does half of politics.”

“No kidding,” Rey mutters, her mind turning to the tax policies that Ben had insisted would stimulate the economy the night before. She may not have gone to college, but she can certainly tell bantha poodoo when she sees it. She wonders how many of the people who dreamed that one up ever struggled to make ends meet in their lives. _Like Ben. _She swallows.

Rey opens the door and extends a hand. Without waiting, Bazine hands her her clothes and she gets dressed. Bazine had picked something nice for her—shorts that are longer than the ones she’d worn on her date with Ben, a loosely flowing top.

“Right,” Bazine says when she comes out of the bathroom, handing her a pair of shoes. “This way.”

They go back to Rey’s bedroom and bathroom, but before they’re even there, Rey has decided she’s going to ask Ben if it even makes sense for them to be in different rooms anymore. She gets the sense that it doesn’t, and having to go to her own bathroom so that Bazine can force her to do makeup doesn’t feel practical.

“This one,” Bazine says as she watches Rey moisturize before taking one of the makeup brushes out of the new leather case on the vanity and beginning to dust powder on her face, “is going to be tricky.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because the President and his mother don’t share politics. And you can be sure that all sides of the spectrum will _not_ take one look at you and her wandering the streets of Coruscant together and think that it’s mother-daughter bonding. Leia Organa,” _Organa_, she needs to remember that it’s not Leia Solo, “is a force to be reckoned with. And everyone will assume that she’s going to use you to try and sway her son’s politics.”

“As if I need her help,” Rey mutters and Bazine’s eyes narrow.

“Careful,” she says quietly.

“Careful of what?” Rey demands. “He has stupid politics. He thinks that—”

“It doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Bazine says sharply.

“It does to me,” Rey replies angrily, but Bazine continues over her.

“It matters how it looks. It matters what it means for both of you if you’re not careful.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that this city and everyone working in it will rip you apart. You’re in over your head,” she tells her. “And I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that you’re not.”

“I don’t think you’ve been lying to me at all,” Rey replies evenly. “Or making it a secret that you don’t think I’m equal to this.”

“I didn’t say that,” Bazine replies. “Just that you’re not at this moment aware that there is a game, much less the rules everyone’s playing by. You don’t get to do whatever you want without consequence—sometimes huge consequence—and you don’t get to find the mom you never had in Leia Organa while her son sits in the Hexagonal Office. And it’d be nice to be naive about it, but if you want not to be stripped of your skin by Coruscant lifers, then you’d best keep that in mind. I don’t want you stripped of your skin.”

“Because it’ll make you look good.”

“Because it’s not actually fun to watch it happen,” Bazine replies. “This place delights on tearing people apart. And if you don’t believe me, ask the President.”

“Oh, he thinks it,” Rey says darkly.

“So listen to us. We know what we’re—”

“I _am_ listening to you!” Rey replies, a little louder than she’d planned. “I just…”

“You want everything to be perfect and easy?” Bazine demands. “You want it to be like a fairy tale—true love’s kiss and all that?”

“That’s not what I—” but Bazine continues as though Rey hadn’t said anything at all.

“It’s the last thing from practical, and you don’t have time to be the last thing from practical. One false move, one first impression wasted, and you’ll be spending the rest of your time in this city trying to clean that up. You don’t deserve that and it’s a waste of my time. You don’t like his politics? Fine. But you don’t understand how fast you lose whatever sway you want to have if you mess anything up now because _everyone_ is waiting for you to do something that’ll mess it all up. Appearances matter. Relationships matter.”

“Right, right. Leia Organa, not to be trusted.”

“Or at the very least to be trusted cautiously,” Bazine says in a tone that Rey assumes is her trying to be gentle. “She won’t destroy you because she won’t destroy her son. That much she made clear during the general election. But everyone and their mother is going to be trying to make the most of your relationship with her, and I _really_ wouldn’t be surprised if she’s not trying to show her side of the political spectrum that she has a relationship with you—and if it’s a _good_ one, well… You more than anyone else has her son’s ear now.”

“Would she really do that?” Rey asks quietly. Leia hadn’t seemed like that at all yesterday.

“_Yes_,” Bazine snaps. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. And oh, it won’t be malevolent. I’m sure she’ll care about you as a person. But she uses people. She’s a politician. That’s what she does. She sure used her son growing up until he started spouting his own ideas and she needed to distance herself.” She gives Rey a once over. “You look good,” she says.

“Thank you,” Rey replies in a clipped tone, marching towards the door. Then she pauses, remembering what Leia had said yesterday afternoon. _She’s the sort of best friend who’ll tell me when my ass is hanging out in public, even if it hurts to hear. _

She glances back at Bazine.

“Yes?” the other woman asks, sounding tired.

“Nothing,” Rey replies and she slips out the door.

Leia’s in the dining room, reading through a newspaper.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Yes,” Rey smiles and Leia gets up at once.

“Don’t tell Han,” Leia says quietly as they get into a transport accompanied by praetorian guards, “because then he’ll make me go with him next time we’re in town, but we’re going to the Air and Space Museum.” And Rey feels her own face light up. Leia smiles delightedly. “Thought you’d like that. I saw your ears perk up yesterday when I mentioned it.”

“I can’t do politics,” Rey says, “But I can do engines.”

“What was working in the shop like?” Leia asks. “Did you like it?”

Rey hesitates. “I liked the transports,” she says. “Transports make sense. They work or they don’t, and when they don’t you fix them or scrap them. The boss was…” She lets her voice trail away and Leia nods.

“Glad to be out of there,” Leia says.

“Yes,” Rey says. “Glad not to be working for him anymore.” There had been days when she’d thought she’d never be out from under Unkar Plutt’s thumb because no one was ever out from under Unkar Plutt’s thumb. Junklords like him could get away with murder in Jakku. “But I miss—” she cuts herself off, thinking of that letter once again. “I wish I had things to do. And I don’t know what I’m allowed to do.”

“Allowed to do?” Leia asks, raising an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

Rey flushes. “Not like that,” she mumbles. “Ben’s not saying I can’t do things.”

“Good, because I raised him better than that,” his mother says fiercely.

“It’s more…” She fumbles for words. Bazine had warned her to be careful, and maybe she’s right, maybe she should be. Except Leia is so warm, and kind, and maybe she’s not the mother Rey never had, but she is going to be someone in Rey’s life long after she and Ben are no longer in the Glass Palace and Bazine’s made her next career move. “I don’t want to mess it up. I feel like one false move and suddenly everyone will be seeing me for just a Jakku junkrat and,” she swallows, her throat suddenly thick, “and what if they’re right? Why do I deserve to have all this? I don’t even know what Ben’s policies are, and I didn’t even vote in the last election and—and—” She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to say that she’s afraid that she’ll hate everything he wants to accomplish quite as viscerally as she had disliked his tax plans the night before. What if he’s—what if he’s…

Leia’s hand is in hers. It is smaller than her son’s and doesn’t fill her with the same warmth that Ben’s touch always does, but it does make her feel calmer, tethered.

“You deserve happiness,” Leia says simply. “And yes, they will tear you down if they can, but that’s because they’re frightened of you. If you learn how to wield what you have, well… it’ll be a little harder for them to maintain the charade that they hold power. And some of them do, but others...very much don’t. You’re young, you’re kind, you’re good looking, you’ve been through hell but haven’t been torn apart—you’re a perfect storm of things that terrify them.

“You do whatever you want, sweetheart. And if it’s hard to figure out what you want to do, well—I can help you with that. I’ve been in this city a long time.” She gives Rey a smile that Rey wants so desperately to trust. They aren’t talking about Ben right now, after all. And she, like Bazine, seems to be supportive of Rey not getting ripped apart by Coruscant. Rey will take that over politics any day.

“I miss doing things with my hands sometimes,” she says. “I drew a bit in a notebook on the shuttle back from Mimban because that’s what I had. But what I liked about working in the shop was building things, making things work.”

“Being useful?” Leia asks, her eyes warm.

“Yeah,” Rey says. “Being useful.”

“Well,” Leia says, leaning back against the seat of the transport, thinking. “I know Han used to cook when he was trying to avoid the world. He wasn’t good at it, mind you, but that was something to do with his hands. There was a reason he never spent much time with me when the Senate was in session, though. He also was always working on that transport of his which…” she glances at Rey, “I don’t know if there’s a transport you’d be allowed to tinker with, but you can look into it. Do you think that would help?”

Rey wonders if she could detach, if she could let politics go, live as oblivious to them as she had in Jakku, let Ben do what he thought was best and smile and be happy because she’d finally found her soulmate. Somehow, she doubts that. Maybe Han Solo had been able to do all that because he had agreed with his wife.

But she knows she can’t say all that to Leia.

Rey looks at Leia. “Maybe,” she says slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Everything’s so different it’s hard to know.”

“You don’t have to have the perfect solution,” Leia tells her, patting her arm. “And even if it’s just distraction—”

“That’s what the notebook feels like. Distraction,” Rey mumbles. “I don’t know.” Suddenly she feels empty and small all over again. She wants to do more than just fix cars. She’s here, right? She should do something with it all, shouldn’t she? Isn’t that why Bazine is trying so hard to keep her from messing up? But who is she to think she can be anything remotely special to anyone but Ben?

“Are there things you particularly miss that you used to do in Jakku?”

Rey frowns. “Mostly just seeing my friends,” she says. “I...Jakku’s not...it’s not a place for fun.”

Leia grimaces. “From the three times I’ve been there, I have to say I agree. It’s a hard place. A cruel place to leave a child alone in.” Rey stiffens and Leia looks at her evenly. “You’re not what your parents abandoned,” she says softly. “I don’t know what they thought of you, but it’s evident to anyone looking at you that you’re strong, Rey. Don’t let this city break you.”

Rey takes a deep breath, and tries to push her doubts aside. “I won’t.”

-

She comes back from the day with Leia to find Bazine, once again, sitting in her bedroom waiting for her.

This time, Rey doesn’t complain. The fundraiser is in several hours, and she showers and lets Bazine do whatever she wants to her hair and makeup. She’s almost relieved, actually. She can focus on this and not the budding conflict in her heart right now. Tonight, she has to be perfect. Tonight, at least, she can put her misgivings aside because there’s only so much her brain and heart can take at once and if it means not getting skinned alive by half of Coruscant, she can pause in trying to understand her own feelings about Ben’s politics.

She knows he’ll be there at her back tonight. And she can focus on that.

“Your security detail has been sorted out,” Bazine tells her as she dabs lipstick onto Rey’s lips. “And I’ve submitted a request with the Director of Communications to find someone we like who’ll do a profile for you in a magazine. Nothing too scary. But a way to introduce you to people. Especially if he wants to run for reelection, everyone will need to know who you are and what you’re like, and the sooner we can do that the better. Smack your lips.” Rey does and Bazine cocks her head. Then she gets a thing of lip liner out of Rey’s makeup bag.

“You aren’t asking how my lunch with Leia went,” Rey points out. She’d been expecting it—a pure grilling from Bazine.

To her surprise, Bazine shrugs. “Believe it or not, I don’t really care how it went. I care what comes of it. And that only time will tell. Now, tonight.” She levels her gaze at Rey. Rey doesn’t think she’s ever looked so serious in all the time she’s known her. It does nothing to soothe her nerves. “Don’t be afraid. And if you are afraid, don’t show signs of weakness. They smell it like sharks smell blood.”

Rey squares her shoulders and there’s a knock on the door. She goes to open it and—

Ok, so she finds Ben attractive. She has since the moment she’d first seen him in person. She’d like to think she’d have found him attractive even if his skin didn’t make her feel warm and safe, even if his eyes weren’t tinted with hers. But there’s Ben’s attractive and Ben in a tuxedo.

She blinks at him, her mouth dry.

He’s wearing a white tie, that perfectly matches the white of his dress shirt and white waistcoat, and contrasts so sharply with the dark of his hair and jacket and pants. The cut of the suit is perfect, and the angle between his broad shoulders to his narrow waist.

Bazine slips by her and it jostles her enough to realize that Ben’s staring at her—

Well, like she’s his world.

His eyes are flitting from her hips to the high neckline to her face, to the slit up the side. “You haven’t seen the back yet,” Rey jokes and she turns and Ben is pushing her into the room and Bazine is snapping, “No I _just_ finished her hair and makeup,” but he’s closing the door and pressing Rey against it, his hands finding hers and holding them against the wood at her back on either side of her head.

He doesn’t kiss her. He just looks at her and she can feel him twitching a little bit in his pants.

“I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you,” he murmurs to her.

“What happens if you don’t?” she asks and he barks out a laugh.

“There was probably a time when I cared if I got an erection at a fundraiser,” he tells her. “Not entirely sure when that stopped being the case.”

“I think you’re entirely sure,” Rey replies with a grin.

“Might be,” he says. He takes a slow and steady breath. “How bad would it be if I didn’t show up to my own party?”

“I don’t know—you’re the one trying to raise some money.”

“Right,” he says. “I suppose I do want that. What if I’m late?”

“I’m probably not the one to ask about political impact,” she says, lifting her chin and leaning forward slightly as she drops her voice as she whispers in his ear, “But I vote you do what you like.” 

The sound that comes out of the back of his throat is pained, but he lets go of her hands and steps back and she feels suddenly so cold, so bereft of him.

“If I do what I like, then we won’t ever leave this room ever again,” he tells her. “We’ll die in bed because we forgot to eat. And at the very least, I’m going to feed you.”

Rey forces out a chuckle—an impressive feat, given how breathless she is—and reaches a hand out for his and they leave her room together. As they make their way down the hall, Rey is _far_ too aware of how wet she is. _He didn’t even kiss me_.

His hand brushes her lower back as they get into the elevator together and Rey turns to him, her eyes flashing. “You can’t do that,” she tells him.

“Do what?” he asks, all innocent, as if he doesn’t know. His fingers dip lightly beneath the line of the dress and he freezes.

“Are you not wearing underwear?”

“Blame Bazine, she keeps putting me in these dresses that would show lines if I did.”

“I’m giving her a raise.”

The elevator doors open and Rey steps forward, Ben trailing behind her and she is extremely sure he is looking at her ass because why else wouldn’t he have taken a step forward to take her hand?

She slows as they reach the reception hall and she can hear voices. So many voices. And jizz music, and the sounds of silverware and glasses clinking and there are so many people. Every ounce of confidence she’d felt a moment before evaporates. She stares at the doors and this time, when Ben touches her, it’s to pull her back against his chest. “It’s going to be ok,” he tells her, but even the comfort she feels in his arms, the safety, the security—it can’t quite keep the sounds of the room ahead at bay.

“What if I make it worse?” she asks him.

“You won’t,” he says.

“Yes, but what if I do?”

“You couldn’t. Trust me.”

He kisses her cheek, pressing his nose against her jaw for just a moment.

“Let’s rip the bacta patch off,” he tells her and he’s gone from her back but his hand is in hers at least as he pulls her towards the party.

As if the whole thing weren’t overwhelming enough, the moment they pass through the threshold of the door trumpets start blasting a very austere sounding piece of music and the only reason that Rey doesn’t freeze is that Ben keeps pulling her forward. Everyone is staring at her and she does her best to smile but it’s extremely hard when she feels like she’s in the middle of a target.

Then Ben lets go of her. He’s shaking the hands of several of the nearest bystanders, greeting them warmly, asking after their families and Rey is acutely aware that she’s just standing there, rooted to the spot like a huge idiot.

“Ms. Johnson,” says an extremely tall woman, almost as tall as Ben, who is wearing a dress military uniform. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Rey says, as the woman continues to introduce herself.

“Phasma. I sit on the President’s security council. I am so very sorry for stealing him away from you the other day.” She doesn’t sound sorry at all. If anything she sounds thoroughly bored.

“Not to worry,” Rey says and this smile—this comes more easily. It’s easier to smile at one person than it is to smile at a whole room. “I know it was important.”

“He’s the single most important man in the world.”

“He is,” Rey agrees, looking at him. He’s talking to more people, and when had he gotten so far away? Is that just the nature of the crowd? Or is that just what it is for him to be President, always being pulled away from her in one way or another?

When she turns back to Phasma, it’s to find a man she doesn’t recognize standing next to her. He is shorter than she is, pale, with orange hair and a pinched expression.

“Hello,” she says smiling and offering her hand.

“Ms. Johnson,” the man replies. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Armitage Hux.” He extends his hand and she takes it, making to shake it, but he lifts her hand to his lips and kisses it.

Rey nods. The name is familiar. Where had she heard it before?

And she’s positively relieved that—for once—her knowledge isn’t coming from that frantic HoloNet search however many days before, but from Ben. _I mostly ran so that I could show Hux I could beat him. _

“I must say, we’re all very glad to have you here.”

“Is that so?”

“The President has been in remarkable spirits, I hear,” Hux says, glancing at Phasma.

“Indeed,” Phasma agrees, sounding suddenly bored. “Unlike anything we’ve seen from him so far.”

“You have truly cast a spell over him,” Hux says.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Rey says at once, reembering the warmth even the slightest touch of his hand makes her feel. “If anything he’s cast a spell on me.” She says it quietly, her eyes ducking down. She feels a little shy saying it because it is quite the truth. At least as far as it comes to most of him. But no—no she had told herself she wasn’t going to think about what his politics might be tonight. She wasn’t going to. She wasn’t going to make this evening harder for herself than it already was.

“Our very own fairy tale princess,” Senator Hux says, his lips curling up into a smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “With her very own fairy tale prince.” Now it sounds like he’s sneering.

Which is probably why Rey says, “Oh, I don’t think it’s fair to call him a prince. He was elected, after all.”

Hux’s smile falters.

“He was,” he agrees. “Though there are those who thinks it is on his mother’s coattails.”

Oh how much easier it would be if that were the truth. “And quite as many who think it is despite her,” Rey replies evenly, hoping that her voice doesn’t betray her heart to Hux. “I suppose the important thing is that he won.” _And you didn’t_.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” says Hux after a moment. He looks like he’s biting back a diatribe, but instead says, “Well, I won’t occupy more of your time. I’m sure that everyone here is scrambling to meet you.”

And they are.

Every four seconds, a new person approaches her, hand extended, introducing themselves and telling her how glad they are to meet her, how welcome she is here in Coruscant, how happy she must be to finally have her soulmate in her life. They all say some variation on the same thing.

“Big difference from Jakku, isn’t it?”

“You’re so lucky—everything all lining up and you’re free of that place now.”

“Maybe the President will finally start having a better understanding of the impact of poverty now that you’re at his side.”

“Now your life can really get going, can’t it? Now that you’re out of that junkhole.”

“You’re so lucky to have found him. Isn’t the databank wonderful? I can’t imagine you’d have met otherwise and then you’d have been stuck there forever.”

Rey’s face is getting tired from smiling so much, and she can’t remember practically anyone’s names and—when she gets a moment to breathe—she can’t find Ben in the crowd at all.

“He’s over there,” says a tall woman with purple hair, and Rey turns. There he is indeed, towering over everyone around him. Somehow being surrounded by people who are that much shorter than him only makes him look taller.

“Thanks,” Rey says.

“Of course,” the woman replies. She extends her hand and when she introduces herself, Rey remembers her name. “Amilyn Holdo.”

“You’re Leia’s friend,” Rey blurts out and Amilyn’s face melts into a warm smile.

“I’ve known her since I was sixteen,” she says. “I’ve known him,” she nods towards Ben’s general direction, “since he was in diapers, though he doesn’t like to think about that. How are you holding up. Everything busy?”

“Trying to keep my head above the sand,” Rey replies and Amilyn nods.

“I wish I could say it would get easier, but it doesn’t really. You just get stronger, and start to see what’s coming your way a little more frequently.”

“Good,” Rey says dryly. “Because that’s what I want forever—to feel overwhelmed.”

“Hate to break it to you, but I’m fairly certain that’s the nature of life,” Amilyn says, more than kindly. “At least you have someone good to keep you company while you do it.”

Which is when Rey notices that Amilyn’s eyes are a clear, solid blue. She doesn’t have anyone. Her throat gets tight—she doesn’t know what to say. That was exactly what she’d been so afraid of for so long, that her eyes would be resolutely hazel. But Amilyn’s voice hadn’t been bitter, hadn’t been self-pitying, hadn’t even been defiant. It had just been.

“You’re all right being alone?” Rey blurts out and Amilyn laughs.

“Don’t let Coruscant take that heart away from you,” Amilyn says. “The cowards who are afraid to ask me that question…” She shakes her head, still smiling. “I’ve never been alone. I have good friends, and a career I’m proud of. Would you believe—I’ve been _scared_ of having a soulmate most of my life. People keep saying they might be just around the corner, you never know, as though that’s supposed to be comforting.” She shakes her head. “You have good friends?”

“Yes,” Rey says at once, thinking of Finn.

“I do too,” Amilyn says. “I love Leia with all my heart, but oh boy am I glad not to have her lot. I’ll help her as much as I can, and then go home to my cat.”

“I wish I’d known how to want that,” Rey says quietly.

“You’re not weak for wanting love,” Amilyn says sharply. “No one is. And after all you’ve been through, you deserve it.”

It sounds different coming from Amilyn than it had from everyone else she’d spoken to. An acknowledgement of her pain, rather than an obsession with her rise. She nods, and swallows.

But before she can think of what else to say, another woman appears. “Well, isn’t this a sight I want a picture of.” She looks about Leia’s age, with her hair pulled back tightly from her face. At her side stands a younger woman, closer to Rey’s age than Amilyn’s, whose face is so close to the older woman’s that she must be her daughter.

“Teneniel ,” smiles Amilyn, giving her a warm hug. “And—no.” The younger woman smiles as Amilyn takes her in, tilting her head modestly. “That’s not Tenel.”

“That’s Tenel,” Tenel says, looping her arm through her mother’s.

“You were just thinking about colleges, what are you doing here being a fully-fledged adult?”

“Rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty and trying to see if I can find someone interested in hiring me,” Tenel says, and her eyes land hungrily on Rey. “Don’t suppose you’re hiring,” she says, winking slightly.

“I wouldn’t even know what I’m hiring, if I’m hiring,” she says as carefully as she can. She gets the impression she’s being sized up. _Show no fear. She can’t tear you apart if you are stronger than she thinks. _

Tenel smiles before saying, “I suppose I should say congratulations. I’ve known Ben a long time, and he’s lucky to have you.”

“Thank you,” Rey says with a polite smile.

“Alas, the fates thwarted Leia and I the merging of our houses,” Teneniel says with a laugh and it clicks into place then. “Ben Solo wasn’t for you, my dear. Which I’d be glad of if I were you.”

“Oh?” Rey asks coolly, but Teneniel doesn’t seem to care about her tone at all, even as Tenel gives her mother a wide-eyed _stop talking what are you saying_ look.

“Hopefully you’ll be able to change his mind,” Teneniel shrugs. “Because god knows we haven’t been able to for years. He’s too stubborn to admit he’s wrong, or that he might be even remotely misguided and that his politics aren’t going to ruin the lives of millions of people. What was all that nonsense about people only getting what they work for or some nonsense? As if someone has to prove their economic value to justify their existence. Maybe he just is that heartless.”

“He’s not heartless,” Rey protests even as her breath leaves her body as though she’s been punched and Tenel interjects, “Mom—come on,” and makes to pull her away. “Sorry,” she adds to Rey, but Teneniel is already shrugging off her daughter’s grip.

“I find it hard to believe that a man with his platform has a heart at all, which is such a shame, because I do love Leia so.”

“That’s enough, Teneniel,” Amilyn says quietly. “You’re going to push her too hard in the opposite direction if you keep on—”

But Rey is already turning on her heels and weaving her way through the crowd. She wants to find Ben, wants to slip her hand in his and make her heart beat in such a different way than it’s beating right now. _He’s not heartless, _she thinks fiercely. She remembers his tears, can see the softness with which he looks at her. He may be stupid, or misguided, or—or something, but he’s _not_ heartless. Teneniel, whoever she is, is _wrong_.

_Isn’t she? _comes a traitor whisper in the back of her mind. _If he truly believes__ what she says they are, can he really _not_ be heartless?_

She can’t find Ben, and the warmth that always accompanies his touch, the warmth that always makes every other difficult thing in her heart recede. People keep smiling at her and hailing her and shaking her hand and all she can see is beautiful gowns and suits and jewelry, crystal glasses of champagne.

She feels like she’s being crushed, like she’s lost, like everyone’s watching her but no one’s there to ground her, and so she’ll just keep getting lost and lost and lost. Her breath is coming in short as more and more people press around her and it’s almost desperately that she removes herself to try and find a bathroom because she feels like she’s going to be sick.

She isn’t, thank goodness. Knowing her luck, she’d get that sick all over the ivory silk she’s wearing and that would only make everything worse. But the bathroom is quiet and she is able to take a few steadying breaths, looking at herself in the mirror.

She looks like a princess; she feels like a pauper.

_What am I doing here? _she wonders.

_Ben_, is the answer.

She waits until she’s feeling a little less overwhelmed, then washes her hands, dries them in soft fluffy white towels, and then steps out of the restroom. The hallway is quiet and her shoes click on the floor as she walks back towards the party. As she approaches the reception hall again, a man comes out, taller even than Ben. His face is clean-shaven, and his bald head has horrible gashes that dig down even into the bone. But most uncomfortable of all are his eyes. Amilyn’s clear blue eyes had been warm, kind, understanding. This man’s eyes are cold.

“Ah,” he says, stopping in front of her, and he is so large that it is hard to get around him easily now that he’s trying to block her path. “Young Rey.”

Rey nods. Bazine had put this weird tape over her nipples to keep them from popping out if they got cold, which she’s glad of right now because her entire body has broken out in uncomfortable goosebumps. “I am,” she says.

“I am Snoke,” he says holding his hand out. “I’ve been wanting to meet you all night, but of course you got separated early on from our favorite President.”

Rey knows bullies. Rey knows thieves and villains. She’d worked for Unkar Plutt. And every instinct in her body is telling her that this man is the worst of them.

“So sorry you got waylaid by Teneniel Djo,” he says. “She can be...hot-headed, shall we say? But that’s the left for you. Always shrieking about perceived slights that they find unfair.”

“That wasn’t what—”

“Now that we have a strong president in place, he’ll be able to create some semblance of order at last. Order is necessary in a world like ours, and he’ll do what needs to be done to maintain it. Provided, of course,” he says, “that he doesn’t let his heart get in the way.”

“How so?” Rey hears herself ask. This, so soon after Teneniel Djo called Ben heartless?

“Well, he is his father’s son, after all. He may have that Organa heritage, but his father wasn’t born in glory and does tend to listen to his bleeding heart and side with the rabble. But I’m confident that Solo will do what’s right for the country in the end. A bleeding heart is all well and good, but it doesn’t solve any problems at all. Only hard work, necessary work can do that.”

“What sorts of—”

“And, of course, if he wants to get reelected, he’ll not want to alienate the donors of what they expect,” Snoke continues as though Rey had not spoken at all. He really does like the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he? He pats one of his pockets. “Money does go far in elections, and it certainly won’t come from the people of Jakku, for all he may…feel for their situation. And I hope that you understand that and do what you need to do to help him achieve what he needs to achieve.”

Rey doesn’t respond to that at all. She just stares at Snoke. _This_ is Ben’s mentor? She doesn’t even begin to know what to say to all this, but more than any other conversation she’s had tonight, she feels exactly what Bazine had warned her about—that Snoke would happily skin her if he could.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m interrupting,” comes a voice that Rey doesn’t recognize.

Both she and Snoke turn to find a short man with a cropped grey beard and another set of unpaired blue eyes staring at them all.

“Not at all,” Snoke says. “Just a friendly chat. But I won’t keep you. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of one another, Rey.”

And he goes. Rey watches him go, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s suddenly feeling so very tired and alone, and she just wants to find Ben and feel better. The shorter man—shorter than she is—is watching her closely.

“You ok?” the man asks.

“I just want someone to show me my place in all this,” she says miserably. “And I feel like everyone’s showing me what they want me to be but it’s not…”

She looks at him, suddenly embarrassed. She doesn’t know who he is at all, and what if he’s out for her blood too, the way Bazine makes it sound everyone is.

“Rey Johnson,” she says holding her hand out.

He doesn’t shake it. “Oh, I know,” he says quietly. “We all know.”

She lets her hand drop, and the man sighs. “Well, at least you’re not stupid. At least you know they’re all trying to get something out of you. The President included. I know that’s not fun to hear, but if you think Snoke’s bad, remember that’s who Solo turned to to get himself elected.”

Rey swallows.

“You’ve got instincts,” he says, watching her closely. “You didn’t like that. You didn’t like him. Listen to that, and use your wits. I’m sure by now you’ve noticed what sort of place this is.”

“Yeah,” Rey says, rolling her eyes. “Don’t trust anyone. I get it.”

“No,” the man says. “Just be careful who you trust, and know that not everyone you trust is going to trust one another. And _don’t_ pick the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes.”

Rey stares at him.

“Who are you?” she asks him. “Why would you say something like that to me?”

But the man is already leaving, and as Rey follows him into the crowded fundraiser, he vanishes into the crowd like a ghost. And, unlike Ben, he’s short enough to truly vanish.

Rey almost jumps out of her skin when she finds herself face to face with Tenel standing in front of her.

“Hi,” Tenel says, squaring her shoulders. “I wanted to apologize for my mother. She…” Tenel pauses, considering her words carefully. “Lets people know where they stand in ways that can be remarkably insensitive.”

Rey’s head is still reeling from Snoke and the strange man that she finds she can’t quite care about Teneniel’s outburst earlier. Her daughter is apologizing. That’s all she needs at the moment. “Thank you,” Rey says, and she watches Tenel relax.

“I do mean it when I say Ben’s a good man, his politics notwithstanding.” She lets out a huff and rolls her eyes. “Inasmuch as I _can_ think that when the man in question is the President. I think he’s been dealt a harder hand than he realizes, and the weight of it all...well the fact that he hasn’t been completely crushed by it is telling.” She gives Rey a hesitant smile.

Rey tries to give her one back. All she really wants to do right now is leave.

“I really think,” Tenel continues. “That you are so lucky—not for what’s happened,” she adds and Rey’s glad that she has a brain in her head enough to clarify this, “But because you more than anyone else here know what it is to rise. Everyone here,” she looks around the rooms. “With the exception of maybe four people, we were born where we are. And you…”

“Don’t belong here,” Rey supplies.

“_Do_. Why shouldn’t you? We live in a Republic. Everyone should belong in this room. You’re going to give so many so much hope, and I don’t even think you realize it.”

“Hope?” Rey asks dryly. “No one in Jakku’s going to look to me for hope.”

“You think so?” Tenel asks her.

“I know so. They’ve got bigger things to care about than Coruscant, and I’d know because I was exactly the same until a week ago.”

“Then it sounds to me like if anyone can give them hope—”

“They don’t need hope, they need health care,” Rey sighs, remembering Finn’s transport accident and the hospital bills he’s still paying off because he hadn’t had insurance, and still doesn’t.

Tenel cocks her head considering and Rey sighs. “Excuse me,” she says brushing past her. She doesn’t have time to watch Tenel grapple with what she doesn’t understand about Jakku. She wants to hold Ben’s hand, feel his touch on her bare back, his breath against her skin. She doesn’t want to think about any of this anymore tonight. She feels wrung dry.

And at last, at long last, she spies him in the center of the room, talking with a dark-skinned man who is wearing a cloak and leaning on a cane.

Rey makes a beeline for him. The man he’s talking to spies her approaching and his lips curl into a catlike smile.

“Someone’s looking for you,” she hears him say, and Ben turns around. A wave of relief washes over her at the look on his face. He slips an arm around her waist and presses a kiss to her temple.

“There you are,” he says so quietly she knows it’s only for her ears. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to.”

“I’ll be making a subtle exit now,” the man says, and Ben calls, “Thank you Uncle Lando,” after him as he leaves. Lando waves and disappears into the crowd, but Rey can’t begin to care because Ben’s turning his attention to her.

“I shouldn’t have let go of your hand,” he tells her quietly. “Have you been ok?”

Rey blinks up at him. She doesn’t even know how to begin to answer that question. “I’m getting tired,” she says quietly. She hasn’t had anything to eat or drink, and suddenly she feels like she can barely stand up.

Ben looks around.

“I probably need to stay at least another hour,” he says, his eyebrows drawing together in concern. “But you’re welcome to go back upstairs if you’d like.”

Something in his voice makes it sound like it’s not what he wants, though.

“I think I just need some quiet,” she says. “I can stay up, if you don’t think you’ll be much more than an hour.”

His face changes again, the same expression he’d had in the elevator.

“Stay in this dress,” he tells her before pressing another kiss to her forehead.

Then Rey retreats to the Residence.

In her room, she finds the little notebook she’d written in on the shuttle, and begins to write.

_Dear Mr. President,_

_I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up with what everyone wants of me. Bazine wants something, your mother, her friends, Hux and Phasma and Snoke and a man whose name I did not learn telling me not to go to the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes. (I love your eyes. I love that we share your eyes. I love the way you make me feel when you look at me.)_

_When everyone is staring at me, all I can think is that I’m going to fail them. How do you do it? How do you balance what they are demanding of you with what you need to be?_

_I don’t know anything about your politics and I need to learn. Everyone expects me to know, as though it’s just something people know. No one I knew in Jakku voted—except maybe Unkar Plutt. No one knew or cared when election day was. Why would we? It didn’t matter. So why would caring about why your uncle hates you, or why your mother’s friends think you’re heartless—_

_You’re not heartless. I know you’re not. But I'm also scared your politics are because I really think they might be._

_Heartless is Jakku, and you’re not Jakku._

_I don’t know what you are, though. And I don’t know how to be me anymore. I don't know if I can be while I'm here._

_I hope I don’t embarrass you in front of everyone._

She turns the page and is about to start to draw when she changes her mind and puts the notebook in her bedside table. _Is it really mine? _she wonders. Everything in this room—the furniture, the clothes—all of it has been given to her, but that doesn’t make it feel like it’s hers. She has always had to scrape things together to make them her own, and that’s not what this is. Is it still her room if she only comes in here to dress and do her makeup, and has every intention of spending every night she can in Ben’s room from now on?

But she doesn’t want him to find the notebook. She doesn’t think he’ll read it, but all the same, it’s hers, and if she brings it into his room, what if Threepio thinks it’s his and slides it in with his briefing memos and then suddenly how she’s been articulating her own feelings to herself is thrust into his face? Would he hate her for saying that? Would he think she was holding back?

She leaves her shoes in her bedroom and drifts down the hallway to Ben’s. There’s a praetorian guard standing there, who nods to her as she passes and goes inside.

And all her breath leaves her body.

There are roses everywhere in the room, long-stemmed, deep red, and perfectly in bloom. There are lit candles as well, long and cream-colored, and Rey’s eyes go very prickly as she drifts towards one of them. There’s a bottle of champagne on ice and two clear crystal glasses.

There is no doubt in her mind what Ben had planned for this evening. None at all. _What if I’ve ruined his moment by seeing it before he came back? _

But she can’t bring herself to leave. It’s all so beautiful and it’s all for her. No one has ever done anything remotely like this for her in her life. She just stands there, letting the gentle fragrance of roses wash over her until her legs take her to one of the chairs and she settles onto it, doing her best not to crease the lovely white dress.

She hears the grandfather clock in the hallway strike midnight and hears the ding of an elevator down the hall. Footsteps now, a door opening and closing again, then more footsteps. Then the door to Ben’s room opens and closes and she feels his arms around her, feels his lips pressing into the top of her head and she tilts her face up to look at him.

He doesn’t say a single word, he just kisses her, bent over the top of the chair and everything is perfect. The gentle light of the room, the warm feeling of his lips on hers, the fragrance of the flowers. She reaches up a hand to caress his cheek and he makes a quiet noise of pleasure against her lips. Then she pulls away and gets slowly to her feet.

Something happens between the chair and the bed, but what that something is is a blur because the only thing she’s aware of is Ben. Ben’s arms and the smoothness of his tuxedo jacket, his breath against her skin, his lips against hers, his hands roaming her bare back, leaving an aching, needy heat in their wake.

Off comes his jacket, his white tie and waistcoat. She kisses him as he takes off his cufflinks, unbuttoning the front of his shirt until it joins the rest on the ground. In one smooth motion, he tugs his undershirt up and over his head and there it is again—his beautiful chest. She sits up and presses her lips to his sternum as he straddles her hips, his cock already bulging in his pants.

She runs her hands up and down his legs, cupping his ass and resting her forehead against his navel. There’s a little trail of dark hair right there that leads down to his groin. She brushes her lips over it and Ben’s hands find her hair and begin to pull the pins holding it in place loose. She groans as his fingers massage her scalp and she tilts her head up, resting her chin against his abdomen.

In the candlelight, she can see that his eyes are dark. His lips are parted, his cheeks flushed and his breath hitches slightly as their eyes lock.

Then he clambers off her, sits down next to her and pulls her lips to hers, her chest to his. Her hands roam from his chest to his groin and every time her fingers brush against the bulge there, his fingers tighten momentarily in her hair.

She could kiss him forever.

Which is the thought that makes her stop, pull away, get to her feet. Ben watches her carefully, his lips parted and she’s sure were it not for the expression on her own face, he’d be asking her what was wrong. But there’s no way he can think he did anything wrong. She won’t let him.

She just wants him to look at her as she slides the straps from her shoulders and lets the fabric fall past her waist.

Which is when she remembers that Bazine had put that weird tape stuff over her nipples because she sees it there, roughly the same shade as her skin.

For a moment she wants to run and hide.

This was supposed to be a reveal and she’s got boob tape on.

But Ben’s staring at her like she’s the moon again and holding out his hands and she steps into them. The skirt of the dress is still fastened around her waist. That, at least, will be a reveal that goes smoothly when she gets there.

Ben cups her breasts gently, his fingers lightly stroking over the edge of the tape.

“Is this going to come off easily?” he asks her.

“I don’t know,” she confesses.

“May I?”

She nods and he begins to pick at it.

It comes off easily enough under his fingers and she gasps when his lips connect to her nipple, licking gently at the slightly pinkened skin. Her head falls back, her eyelids flutter closed, her hands in his hair. This—this is—this is all—

“Ben,” she hums. His hair feels so good beneath her fingers, everything about him feels so good, so right, like he is taking it personally upon himself to make up for everything she’s suffered in her life. “Ben.”

He peels away the other piece of tape, his fingers rolling her nipples until she’s whimpering and dripping down her legs.

Because god is she wet. Wetter than she’s ever been. And if she weren't standing right now, she’d be rolling her hips a little trying to get some friction there.

And the moment the thought crosses her mind, she’s done for. Her hands find the hook and eyelet on her left side, just by her waist and she tugs the zipper down and her skirt pools at her knees and Ben pulls away going so very still.

He’d seen her cunt the other night when he’d licked her to bliss and back, but the way he’s taking her in now, the way his eyes are sweeping from the thatch of hair between her legs up to her chest, to her lips, to her eyes.

Rey licks her lips.

And he’s pulling her onto the bed, rolling her onto her back, kissing her neck, his fingers between her legs, stroking at her gently, little circles that send pressure pooling in her belly and, just like the other night, she’s crying out too soon, and clinging to his shoulders while her belly and legs shake and her sex throbs.

Languidly, she kicks her skirt off the rest of the way while Ben clambers off the bed. She watches as he roots around in his bedside table for a silver foil packet, which he rips open. He drops his pants and underpants and Rey’s mouth goes dry.

She’s watched porn before. It’s never been particularly compelling for her. The actors are rarely soulmates, their eyes don’t match, but it had been a good way to get her going when she’d wanted to ease some of her own loneliness. She’s used to seeing big dicks. She is.

And she wouldn’t say that Ben’s dick is like...porn star big, but it’s definitely bigger than she expected it to be. It, like him, seems larger in person than ever it had in her imagination—maybe because until now she’d only ever experienced it through several layers of his clothing.

He rolls the layer of latex on, then turns to her and crawls back across the bed. He brushes his nose against hers and she lifts her lips to his. “Hi,” she whispers.

“Hi,” he replies, nudging her legs apart with his knees. Rey tilts her hip up, bending her knees on either side of his hips as he does his best to line himself up to her. His torso is so long that her face is pressed against his chest as he guides his tip into her.

“Yeah?” he asks her, and she finds his hand and squeezes it. Then he begins to press in.

It doesn’t go in easily. He’s thick and she’s slippery and more than once he slips back out as he tries to get deeper. Rey bites the inside of her cheek as well because it’s not exactly comfortable. It pinches, slightly, and maybe because he’s wearing a condom, but it doesn’t feel half as good as his tongue had felt. There’s no warmth there.

“You ok?” he asks her when she makes a squeaking noise. He’s half in and Rey’s tense. When she doesn’t respond, he pulls back out and his lips brush her forehead. “What’s wrong.”

“Can I try being on top?” she whispers. “It just—it’s feeling a little—”

And he’s rolling onto his back, pulling her astride his hips once again and Rey grabs hold of him and pumps him a little bit. His eyes roll into the back of his head and she slows until he opens them again. She wants them open when they do this.

It’s a little easier like this—if only because she can set the pace. She can slide along him slowly, can kiss him, can take deep breaths that lead to her sinking deeper and deeper onto him. Ben’s thumb finds her clit and he strokes it lightly as he watches her move, and that helps a lot too, spreads warmth right through her, makes her feel closer all over again. He looks dazed as he watches her, and when she is, at last, fully sheathed on him, he sits up underneath her and brings her lips to his, brushing her hair out of her face. It’s a slow kiss, a deep one, their tongues stroking one another gently, their fingers tracing circles on cheeks and shoulders.

And then she begins to move, rolling her hips against his lightly at first, but the moment she hears him groan she knows that won’t last long. His hands drop from her back to her hips and he’s urging her faster and it’s delicious, the way he feels sliding in and out of her. It’s like her heart is beating in perfect time with the motions, pounding in her chest and ears and nipples and cunt and there is nothing she can do except let the wave wash over her again as she cries out his name and clutches him to her.

And then she’s on her back again, and Ben’s hand is fisting in the pillow next to her as he’s pumping into her, hard and fast and a few minutes he’s collapsing onto her chest with a drawn out groan.

Then everything is still except for the quiet spitting of the candles.

She presses a kiss to his sweaty collarbone and he rolls off her, pulling the condom off and throwing it into one of the wastebins by the bed. Then he pulls her to his chest.

Neither of them speak, but Rey gets the sense that neither of them wants to ruin this with words. Everything in this moment, in this bed is perfect, and easy, and right.

And that’s the thought that makes her smile as she drifts off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Jizz](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jizz) (never not mention this canon fact of Star Wars canon)  
[Teneniel Djo](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Teneniel_Djo)  
[Tenel Ka Djo](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tenel_Ka_Djo)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your lovely and kind reviews. I seriously can't express how much they mean to me. Work continues to be A Huge Butthead and I haven't had the brainpower to reply and I'm so so sorry about that. I will get to it soon I hope.

Rey sleeps through Ben’s wakeup com, sleeps through him getting out of bed. When she wakes, the room is dim from light seeping past the edges of the curtains and still full of flowers. She sits up, stretches, and notices a note written on heavy cardstock on the bed next to her.

_I didn’t want to wake you._

_I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning._

_I’ll be thinking of you all day._

His handwriting is very good, she notices, and it makes her smile. Little details about him that make her remember that all this is real when everything else is telling her it’s a dream.

She climbs out of the bed and pauses. She could put the dress that’s on the floor—heavily wrinkled by now—back on. Or she could rifle through Ben’s closet and see if he has a t-shirt and some sweatpants she can wear down the hall to her own room. _The two room setup is really not going to work in the long term, _she grins to herself as she goes over to his dresser.

Until she spies a long bathrobe hanging off a hook in his bathroom. That’ll do.

She puts it on, ties the tie tight around her middle and then returns to her bedroom, passing the guard stationed outside of Ben’s door.

She puts the card he left her in her notebook next to the “letter” she’d written the night before, then throws herself on the bed and stares at the ceiling. If it could just be this…

Well, if it could just be this, she’d be bored.

She knows that.

Because waiting for Ben does not make her happy, and that’s what so much of this is.

She reaches over to one of the bedside tables and coms Finn.

Or tries to.

When she reaches the diner, Dex says it’s his day off, which Rey suspects means that she won’t be able to find him at all. The gas station doesn’t like it when she coms Finn, even with emergencies, and if he’s not there, he doesn’t have a mobilecom because who in Jakku has money for mobilecoms? The mobile companies have done so much to try and cheapen plans for Jakku, and they’d all three of them tried pay-as-you-go plans, but it had been too much. When she had lived with Finn and Rose, it's not like they’d had much need of a mobilecom anyway. There was nothing that couldn't wait for seeing them after work in the evenings. 

A lump lodges in her throat as she puts the com back on the bedside table.

Bazine knocks a little while later as Rey is dressing herself in a simple set of denim and a nice blouse. She’s even wearing a bra today. Bazine nods approvingly and says,

“How was last night?” Rey’s mind immediately leaps to Ben’s bedroom and she flushes slightly. Bazine rolls her eyes.

“I meant the fundraiser, not your sex life.” Rey inhales sharply through her nose. Bazine rolls her eyes again. “You were both appropriately subtle, but it’s hard to miss when the President orders a million roses and wine and candles to his bedroom and a two-thousand credit dress ends up crumpled on the floor. Congratulations, by the way. That’s not what I care about.”

“The fundraiser was…” Rey pauses and then shudders. “Do I have to go to more of them?”

“Fifty percent of your job is to look pretty on his arm, you know that, right? You’ll go to every one he goes to, and he goes to a lot of things like that. You also were enough of a success that I woke up to eight hundred emails inviting you to every social event in the city and had to request setting up a full staff for you from the President this morning.”

“And?”

“I have permission to look for a social secretary,” she says. “Because you’re going to need one.”

“Great,” Rey mutters. “Can we hire me someone to teach me how politics works as well?”

“Might be hard to call them that, but I can probably put in a request for a legislative staffer if you think you’ll want to get involved with a legislative agenda.”

Rey looks at her. “I don’t even know what a legislative agenda _is_. That’s the problem. And what little I know of his legislative agenda…” She swallows. She doesn’t want to think about it, especially not after what they’d done the night before, how happy she had been. But he wasn’t around to hold her hand and make her feel safe, and all she could think of was his _stupid_ tax views. And she had this sinking sensation in her stomach, after the way that people had talked last night, that that was just the tip of the iceberg. “I don’t know what _his_ legislative agenda is, or why people kept saying to me that he was a terrible, heartless person. I don’t know what I’m doing, or how to even go about learning what I don’t know. And now I’m going to have a staff. I’ve never been in charge of anything before.”

Bazine is watching her carefully.

“Are you done freaking out?” she asks after a moment.

Rey glares at her. “Are you saying I don’t have a lot to be freaking out about?”

“No,” Bazine says. “But I’m saying once again what I’ve _been_ saying this whole time: I’m here to help you. So if you’re done freaking out, let me help you.”

And she crosses the room to sit down on one of the armchairs, and Rey does the same.

“Historically,” she says, “First Ladies or Gentlemen have fit one of two models. The first is the one I anticipate you’ll say no to: you are the social butterfly to complement whatever it is the president’s doing. You oversee all events hosted in the Palace, you are the hostess in chief.” Rey makes a face and Bazine nods. “The next is someone who has their own legislative agenda. The President has his, and if there’s something you’re passionate about that’s not on his agenda, then you can lobby congress to address it.”

“Which I’d need both a legislative agenda and staffer for, not to mention something I’m passionate about,” Rey says and she drops her head in her hands.

“Oh, I think you’ll find something,” Bazine says quietly.

Rey looks up.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“Call it a hunch.”

Rey frowns. “What sort of hunch?”

Bazine sighs. “I don’t think I can articulate it. And trust me, I would if I could. There’s something about you that’s about to come to a boil, and I’m pretty sure when it does we’ll all be in for it.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Rey demands.

“You survived Jakku,” Bazine shrugs. “You survived living in the state in this country that has the most abject poverty. Poverty _so _abject that people don’t even know how to talk about it. A state whose senators are Palpatine lackeys who got funding from Snoke and don’t do anything to help their people, which is why voter turnout is so low. You didn’t finish high school, but you’re whip-smart and resourceful and you keep being afraid of failing without realizing that everyone here is terrified that the second you realize they’re all full of hot air, you’ll destroy everything they want to believe is fair and right.”

Rey blinks. “And what do you think is fair and right?”

“I don’t really care,” Bazine says shrugging.

“Then what do you care about?”

“Winning,” Bazine says. “And since I was never going to be a professional sports player, politics was going to have to be the thing for me.” Rey cannot for the life of her tell if Bazine is pulling her leg or not, so she presses on.

“And you think I’m your winning horse?”

“We’ve been over this. I think you’re going to look very good on my resume regardless of if you win or lose. But if you win, that’ll be better. So we need to work out what you’re going to want, which means, I suppose, you’re right. You need a teacher. Because I’m assuming you want one because you don’t want to ask the President to tell you all he knows.”

Rey nods. “I don’t want to be the one to ask him why people hate him.” Because whatever Teneniel Djo had said the night before, Ben wasn’t heartless. Not even a little bit. And she knows that that question will hurt him more than he wants to admit. “And I—I don’t know that he’ll be able to tell me things that aren’t just what he believes. Like,” and she grimaces. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

“You’re trying not to be disloyal,” Bazine replies easily. “Which is commendable of your character. But it’s also not necessarily practical if you don’t think you’re going to agree with him all the time—and it’s clear from this conversation that you don’t. So you want to have someone who’ll tell you what he won’t so you can try and form your own opinion.”

“Yes,” Rey says. “I know you’re here to help, but it can’t just be you, either. I always liked having more than one opinion.” She thinks of Finn and Rose, keeping her centered always. They didn’t always agree with each other, and sometimes that was hard, but it also helped make things easier.

That’s when the thought occurs to her, and asks a question that she knows Bazine isn’t expecting.

“I’d like to speak with Tenel Djo. Can you arrange that?”

She’s right. Bazine isn’t expecting that at all.

“Tenel Ka Djo?” she asks slowly. Ka _Djo_, Rey corrects herself internally.

“Because I think she’ll be able to give me a different viewpoint than you, or Ben. And I know she’s looking for a job.”

“Hang on,” Bazine says fast, and it’s the first time that Rey’s ever heard her panic before. “You can’t just offer Tenel Ka Djo a job because you met her at a party.”

“Why not? She seemed honorable.” Tenel had come to apologize on her mother’s behalf after all.

“Because the Djo family doesn’t exactly…”

“Get on with Ben? Yes, I noticed,” Rey replies. “But I also remember her name, unlike everyone else I met last night, so she’s got that going for her.”

“I suppose I can spin as you trying to get in good with the mother-in-law, if it gets out,” Bazine murmurs, considering aloud. “Teneniel is one of Leia’s best friends, and that much at least people would understand.”

“I’m not trying to impress Leia. You don’t have to lie for me,” Rey says.

“And if you do end up hiring her,” Bazine continues as though she hadn’t heard, “We can have a serious conversation about how her politics come into play with her advising you. Because yes, you have a right to have opposition opinions, but she can’t just go pushing you off to the left and undermining the President because she wants to.”

And Rey feels so tired, even though she’d slept so deeply. Better than she’d slept most nights of her life.

“I don’t see what her politics have to do with anything, if I’m the one in charge. _I’m_ not going to stab him in the back, even if I learn—” She doesn’t want that lump to lodge in her throat. She really doesn’t. But there it is. She presses on. “Even if I learn things I don’t like.”

Bazine pauses, and Rey wonders if she’s going to do anything to offer Rey comfort because she can tell that Bazine knows she’s grappling.

Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t, even if her words come out with a mildly gentler tone. Somehow Rey thinks that’s as much as she can do. “Because no one knows you, or your leanings, and so they’ll turn everything you do into something whether or not you like it. We don’t live in an ideal world. People don’t assume nobility of one another in this city. People don’t listen to the opposition to understand and compromise. The sooner you get that, the sooner you’ll actually show that you understand the world around you.”

“I get that,” Rey says. “But I still have to learn something, don’t I? You’re the one who said people will accuse him of controlling me. Well, if I don’t get to form my own opinions, isn’t that what’s happening? If I care what people think I’m doing right now, then I won’t be able to do anything, because one group thinks I’m in the bag, a done deal, another thinks I’ve already sold my soul to the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes.” And that was before they even got to Leia, who was probably a side unto herself. “If I mess up, I mess up. But you don’t fix the engine if you don’t try to figure out what’s wrong with it first and just stare at it for hours on end. I’m going to do something.”

Bazine blinks at her. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone liken politics to fixing a transport engine before.”

“I’m a mechanic,” Rey grumbles. “No matter if you put me in a dress that costs a million credits, I’ll always feel better about wrenches than people.”

Bazine is quiet for a moment, then she takes out her mobilecom. “I still don’t think that she’s remotely close to the right person for this job.”

“And I’m the boss, aren’t I?”

Bazine looks up from her mobilecom and Rey’s never seen that look in her eyes before—something that mixes an almost warm _yes, you are, _and _that doesn’t stop you from being wrong. _“I’ll see if I can get her in to see you this afternoon.”

“Great. I now have a schedule,” Rey says.

“Oh, and the President wanted you to see him sometime this morning.”

Rey raises her eyebrows. “Now you’re telling me this?” she asks, getting to her feet.

“He’s already over an hour behind his daily schedule, so it doesn’t honestly matter,” Bazine says.

“When should I go then? If he’s behind?”

“Oh, no. He didn’t give you a time. He wanted you to stop in.”

“Doesn’t that make his daily schedule worse?”

“Possibly, but you’re also probably upping his list of two to his list of three.”

“List of three?”

“Three people with unfettered access,” she says. “You can probably barge in whenever you like right now. I imagine if you abuse the privilege, though, he’ll have his staff have me tell you that that’s not ok anymore, because he probably won’t want to tell you himself. If I had to guess.”

“Why wouldn’t he want to tell me himself?” Rey asks.

“Do you think he likes saying no to you?” Bazine laughs. “He looks ten years younger every time he looks at you. He’s probably going to make everyone else deliver the hard news for the rest of your life.”

“Who are the other two?” Rey asks.

“Hm?”

“On his list. Who?”

“Mitaka,” Bazine replies, which Rey supposes makes sense. “And Snoke.” Rey frowns, and Bazine reads her like a book. “Snoke funded his entire campaign. You don’t say no to the money.”

“Yeah, I get that. I used to work for Unkar Plutt.” How many times had she heard Plutt tell someone that you never say no to the money before beating them with a chain in the back of the shop to show them what happened when you did?

Nice to know that bullies were bullies wherever they were, she supposes. She doesn’t like it one bit. “So I just...I just go down there?”

“Yup.”

“And where do I go?”

Bazine blinks. “You haven’t actually gotten the full tour, have you?”

“No,” Rey replies.

“Well, let’s get you down there, then,” Bazine says.

Which is how Rey finds herself in the West Wing of the Glass Palace, walking past bustling people, all walking and talking very quickly. Bazine is rattling off names. The Windu Room, the Map Room, the Mirror Room.

Bazine leads her into a small office with tall windows that has two desks. Behind one sits Ben’s bodyman Thanisson, behind the other sits an elderly man with blue-framed spectacles who doesn’t look up from his computer screen.

“Hello Artoo,” Bazine says, “Is he busy?”

Artoo looks up, then glances between the two of them, then says, “He’s an hour and twenty behind. So free as bird.”

“Good, because he wanted to see Ms. Johnson,” Bazine says and Artoo’s gaze lands once again on Rey.

“Hello,” Rey says at once, extending a hand. Artoo shakes it. Then he glances at Thanisson, who gets to his feet and goes in through the door at the side of the office.

A moment later, a whole host of suited people much older than Rey stream out of the door, and Thanisson waves Rey in.

It’s probably a dumb first thought to have, but the Hexagonal Office is, in fact, a hexagon. Huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows with thick red curtains line one half, while the other half is covered in paintings. It’s a pale cream color, and there’s a set of couches and chairs by a fireplace on one side, and a desk smack dab in the center of the three windows on the other. Everything is, as everything has been in this building, beautiful, ornate but in an understated way.

Ben’s standing in front of his desk in suit and tie, and his face warms the moment she looks at him.

“Thanks Thanisson,” Ben says, and Thanisson slips back out of the office.

“Hi,” Rey says, crossing the office to stand next to him. Somehow, this time, she doesn’t feel like it’s just the two of them the way she does when they’re in the Residence. Right now, all she can think is she’s in the Hexagonal office.

He bends down to kiss her, and she rests her hand on his chest. She can feel two pens in his breast pocket, just over his heart.

“Thank you for the note,” she whispers.

“I meant every word,” he breathes.

She wants to drown in his eyes, to kiss him until she can’t breathe, but Artoo had said that he’s already an hour and twenty minutes behind schedule. She hates the idea that that will eat up time they might have tonight, so she says, “Bazine said you wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” he replies. “A few things I wanted to talk to you about.” He lets go of her and rounds the desk, pulling out a manilla file. “We’ve sorted out your detail for if you want to leave the Palace on your own.” He hands her the folder. “Extremely capable team. Bazine should have you chat with them later about protocols.”

“All right,” she says.

“It also occurred to me this morning that you and I should talk about contraception.” Which isn’t what Rey had been expecting to talk about in the Hexagonal Office. Security detail, sure. That makes sense. What happens when they have sex though?

“What would you like to talk about?” she asks him.

“Condoms seem inefficient, given the lifestyle we’re going to lead. It’s not something we can run out and grab if we run out of them, and while I’m sure Thanisson was amused at the request the other day, that shouldn’t be his job.”

“No,” Rey agrees. “So you want me to get pills or—”

“Or an IUD,” he says. “Or other options—whatever you think is best.”

“So I should make an appointment,” Rey says.

“There are medical units in the army that usually cover the First Family. When was your last checkup?”

“My what?”

“Your annual checkup?”

Rey blinks at him. He blinks right back.

“To make sure you’re healthy. Seeing a doctor.”

“I haven’t seen a doctor since I was sixteen,” Rey says. She had when she’d been a kid. Her foster families had seen to that as part of their duties. But once she was out of their houses, that had stopped. The first doctor she’d seen since then had been when they’d taken her samples for the Soulmate Databank, and she’d been saving pennies for three years to afford that.

Ben opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then opens it again. “You haven’t seen a doctor since you were a teenager?”

“With what money could I see a doctor?” she asks. “Finn is still paying off hospital bills from a transport accident five years ago. I’ve been healthy. There wasn’t a need.”

“I see,” Ben says slowly. “Well, ok. We’ll get that scheduled for you.” He’s frowning and looking down at his hands. Rey suddenly feels very uncomfortable.

“Anything else?” she asks, and he looks back up.

“That’s it from me,” he says. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“I’m hiring a staff,” she says.

“Yes, I spoke with Bazine about that earlier.”

“What happens if you don’t like who I hire?” she asks.

“It’s your staff,” he replies slowly. “They report to you, not me. My staff might have some words if they don’t like your choices, but ultimately they are your choices.”

Rey nods again. She takes a step forward and takes his hand and immediately, she feels better. She kisses his cheek, and he turns at the last second to catch her lips with his.

“I’ll probably be late tonight, unless we make up time,” he tells her sadly. “It’s like that sometimes.”

“Ok,” Rey says. “I’ll see you later.”

She nods to Artoo and Thanisson and walks with Bazine out into the rest of the West Wing. “I apparently need to see some doctors,” Rey says.

“What for?”

“A checkup,” Rey tells her. “And birth control.” She’s glad in that moment that Bazine has said multiple times that she explicitly does not care about Rey’s sex life. Finn would tease and Rose would smile and tell her everything she could possibly want to know and more about every possible variety of contraception that Rey had never heard of and she’d go bright red and want to sink right through the floor.

“Well, since you have literally nothing until three o’clock, let’s get that squared away,” Bazine says.

Which is how Rey ends up in a basement office of the Glass Palace in a medical gown, talking with a military doctor who keeps wrapping things around her arms and squeezing them, and waving lights in her eyes. He does a breast exam—an experience Rey does not particularly enjoy—and, apologizing profusely, presses his fingers into her guts to test her organs—which Rey likes even less—before advising her to get an IUD and saying that they can schedule for one to be put in and do a pelvic exam (a phrase Rey _really_ does not like) the next day. Then another person comes and takes blood samples from her.

She has lunch by herself, then as three pm approaches, Bazine takes her into the study in the Residence and asks, “Do you want me to sit in on this?”

Rey shakes her head. “I’d like to do it on my own.”

Bazine nods and leaves the office. She comes back a few minutes later with Tenel Ka Djo on her heels.

“Ms. Johnson,” Tenel says, extending a hand. “I’m glad to see you again,” she says. Rey shakes her hand and invites her to sit. Tenel hands her a piece of paper, then sits. The paper has her name at the top and information about her degree and work, which Rey places on the sofa next to her. A long silence stretches between them.

“Your mother said Ben was heartless,” Rey says at last. Tenel shifts uncomfortably, all of her collectedness fading. “Why?” Tenel pauses, considering and Rey cuts in, “Please just talk. You don’t have to worry about offending me.”

Tenel blinks, and says slowly, “Well...it’s his everything, really. Everything he’s done over the course of his political career.”

“Assume I know nothing about his political career,” Rey says. “What has he done?”

Tenel’s eyes flicker. “Assuming you know nothing,” Tenel begins, “means that I assume you don’t know about the New Empire Party?”

Rey inclines her head and Tenel crosses her legs, sitting up a little straighter. “All right, about forty years ago, the Empire party fell apart. Palpatine had been the leader of it for a good...thirty years at that point? But it got sort of ripped to shreds by the Party of the Republic—that’s Leia Organa’s party—and now they’re basically gone. They’re still there, weak and on the fringe, but they don’t really matter. I think there are four congresspeople who were elected from the Empire party to the House of Representatives, and no one in the Senate at the moment.”

Tenel pauses then, gathering her thoughts. “The New Empire Party is what we call the First Order, which is the President’s party. They started rising maybe fifteen years ago and sort of...filled the void that was left on the far right when the Empire Party fell apart. Younger, more polite, more savvy, and just as morally bankrupt. Snoke,” and the way Tenel spits out his name is as much as Rey needs to decide that she trusts the woman, “essentially…” she sighs again.

“You’re not going to hurt my feelings if—”

“No, it’s not that,” Tenel says. “There’s a lot broken in this country. I don’t have to tell you that. You grew up in Jakku. And you were right last night—Jakku doesn’t need hope, it needs health care. People in the cities, in the places that voted Republic—they’re the ones that need hope. They’re the ones who need to see that you give a damn about social services, or human rights, or public works, because god knows no one in the First Order does. The First Order might _say_ they do, but everything they do just…”

“Like what?” Rey presses.

“Like HR-49210,” Tenel says at once. “To talk about health care. You said Jakku needs health care, well, that was the health care reform bill that the First Order proposed. It would have basically made it legal for employers to deny health care for employees who weren’t ‘performing to standard.’ Whatever that meant, because they sure didn’t define it. Extremely legally dubious, which is why it never made it past the House, but their thought was that if someone wasn’t valuable, why did the employer have to invest in them?”

“So someone’s life was determined by how hard they worked?” And there it was again. Payoff for hard work only. Even without saying Ben’s name, somehow Rey was sure that he hadn’t taken a stand against the bill. There’s a sinking feeling in her gut that she tries to keep off her face as Tenel replies.

“Basically. But it gets even more complicated. The government is supposed to protect the people, right? But the work of the First Order is, essentially, prioritizing those who hold power over others, rather than those who need help. You see it in the way they talk about police brutality—saying that people who get shot or beaten probably deserved it as though _innocent until proven guilty_ doesn’t mean a thing, in the way they talk about discrimination as though it doesn’t exist because they decided it didn’t, in the way they talk about money as though it’s the only thing that can neutrally determine the worth of human life. And it _is_ heartless,” she says, breathing hard. “The President may have a good heart when he is with you. I’ve known him for years, I don’t think he’s a cruel man on an individual level. But I think he’s got fuck-all of the sense god gave an acorn when it comes to making people’s lives better.” 

“So what does he think he’s making better?” she asks. Because Ben has to think he’s doing _something_, right? He wouldn’t just do that—unless he was significantly stupider than she thought he was. If he’s not heartless, surely there has to be _some_ reason there. Her heart is hammering in her chest and her palms are sweaty. She tries to wipe them off on her skirt as surreptitiously as possible.

Tenel doesn’t reply right away, and when she does, there’s a tinge of sympathy to her voice that makes Rey sure that her distress is showing on her face.

“I think that there’s an idealism there,” she sighs. “No—honestly. I do,” she adds when she sees Rey’s derision. “The First Order…they think that things were better before the Empire fell. That they had the right of the political landscape of the country fifty years ago. And so if they can recover that, then they’ll believe we’ve achieved a glory they think has…slipped. Poverty will go away, people will celebrate in the newfound order that comes from a unified political vision. If I had to guess, I think he believes the lie that he’s actually building a future in which people can thrive, without realizing that the _order_ that the First Order believes in protects no one except those who don’t need protecting. And it _is_ a lie. But they won’t let themselves acknowledge it, because if they do, their whole political morality falls apart. Our country was never perfect. To say that it is a _dishonor_ to a republic which is supposed to be constantly improving itself, doing better than was done before because no one’s perfect, but we can try to fix what’s not.”

Silence stretches between them. Rey clings to it. She needs to believe Tenel’s words, needs to believe that Ben actually thinks he’s doing the right thing for the sake of others because if he’s not, if he’s just cruel—would the universe really do that to her? Couple her with a monster as some sort of horrible joke?

“And you think I can talk sense into him?” Rey asks. “Make him recognize that the lie is a lie?”

“If anyone can, it’d be you. If you want to. Which no one seems to be able to get a straight answer out of you about.”

Rey swallows.

“I want to help,” she says quietly. “But…”

Tenel cocks her head, looking directly at her and Rey says, “But what do I know? I don’t know _anything_ about how all this works. I’m just…”

“Jakku doesn’t need hope, it needs health care,” Tenel repeats back to her. “Don’t undervalue what you do know.” She leans forward. “When you know what you want, we’ll help make it happen, don’t you see? If you are able to get something like...like…” she struggles for words, then leans back against her chair. “Ok, let’s look at this way. I’ve known the President since we were kids. I’ve known his mother since before I could walk. I know the vision she has of the world, I know the power she’s been able to put into her work. I know what she wants from the world because it’s what my mother wants from the world. And my mother got to keep her heir. Leia’s was stolen away by a snake who doesn’t have a heart, mind, or soul.” She leans back. “I _refuse_ to believe that you are his soulmate and he’s just going to continue to fuck everything up. No way. I don’t know if I believe in gods or fate, but this is a little _too_ obvious for it not to be something.”

Rey hadn’t thought about it like that before.

How could she have? When this is the first time she’s really—

She swallows and looks down at her hands.

She hadn’t gone to an annual checkup since she was a teenager. She hadn’t been able to afford it. Did Ben think that was because she hadn’t worked hard enough? Did he think that she’d chosen to work for Unkar Plutt and Dex because she was lazy and couldn’t find a real job, go to college, make something of her life that wasn’t just fixing other people’s cars, only barely a step up from the recycling plants?

_He loves me, _she thinks, and tears prickle at the corner of her eyes. _He can’t think I’m worthless. _Not when he looks at her like she’s the moon, not when he fills his bedroom with roses because he had fixated on her liking flowers, not when…

“Ms. Johnson?” Tenel says slowly and Rey gets to her feet and goes to stand by the window that Ben had stared out of when his mother had arrived unexpectedly.

“The job is a social secretary,” she tells Tenel. “I don’t know what that means, but I imagine you do. If you can convince Bazine Netal to hire you, then you have the job.”

“I think I’m equal to that task,” she says and she hears Tenel standing up. “It was very good to see you again, ma’am.”

Rey turns and pulls a smile onto her face and crosses back to the couch to shake Tenel’s hand. The other woman leaves her alone in the study, and Rey goes back to the window.

_Right_, she thinks. _Get a grip._

_If he does think all of that, then he’s a fool. And you can tell him so._

_He’s better than this._

_I want him to be better than this._

But she also knows that she can’t _make_ him do anything.

And that’s terrifying.

Leia, and now Tenel, implying that just by her presence, something might change within him—what does she even _do_ with that? And if she fails—

No, she’s not going to think about that.

She’s not going to let herself think about what happens if it comes to him…she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what any of this means, or how any of this works. She’s just some woman from Jakku.

_But I still know more than him about some things. And he’ll hear that from me if it comes to that._

And again, she feels very tired. Because what could she say that wouldn’t sound like critiques he’d probably gotten for years and years from his mother and his uncle? And also, now that Rey thinks about it, his mother’s friends, and their children? Why would it be _any_ different coming from her lips? What if it was worse?

But still...something doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s because Snoke had creeped her out so quickly while Leia had been nothing but warm, but something just...doesn’t feel right.

She’s not alone for long.

Bazine comes in two minutes later with two women in the red jackets the praetorian guard wears when they’re not trying to blend in with the crowd.

“Ms. Johnson, this is Jannah,” Bazine says, nodding to the taller, black woman, “and Zorri,” the shorter white woman. Both have curling hair and eyes that are spiked with a different color. “They’ll be in charge of your security detail.”

“We have ten other agents who will be rotating in and traveling with you,” Jannah says. “And if you’ll permit me, I want to go over some details regarding security whenever you’re not in the perimeter of the Glass Palace.”

“Please,” Rey says, pointing to the sofa, and both women sit down.

It’s far more intense than Rey could have expected. Any trip she makes to leaving the perimeter of the Glass Palace she needs to have at minimum three agents with her—one to keep an eye on the door, one to keep an eye on her, and one to keep an eye on their surroundings. More than three would be preferable. Advanced notice for these forays out into the city would be preferable so that the team could coordinate with local monitoring security.

She can’t drive her own car, not that she has one; the guards should have access to her email password and phone in case she gets death threats that require investigation; her private conversations would remain private—except that there would always be a guard nearby.

“We won’t report the nature of your conversations to anyone, though,” Jannah says gently. “It gets dangerous if you feel you have to hide things from us. Everything will remain strictly confidential. Not even the President will be able to order us to tattle on you.”

“All right,” Rey says slowly, her breath shaking a little bit. “And you’re sure all this is...necessary?”

“Yes ma’am,” Zorri tells her. “The last thing anyone wants is for you to get hurt, and it is unfortunately likely that anyone who’d want to hurt the President would also want to hurt you.”

“Do people want to hurt him?”

“We get death threats every day,” Jannah replies, and Rey’s innards lurch. “Most of them are nothing more than words, but they do happen. Don’t worry. We are the most elite guard in the world. If anything happens to you, it’s because something happened to one of us first.”

Rey swallows.

That’s not exactly comforting.

“Thank you both,” she says. “If I’m with Be—the President, does that mean I’ll be with his detail or yours?”

“Likely both,” Zorri says. “To maximize coverage.”

“Right,” Rey says. “And inside the Palace?”

“Only during functions,” Zorri says.

“Starting now?” she asks.

“Starting now,” Jannah replies.

“Thank you,” she says again and the two guards excuse themselves. Rey throws herself down on the sofa once again.

Barely more than a week ago, she’d had to keep a wrench in her back pocket in case she needed to deck someone who got too close.

Now Unkar Plutt won’t be able to ever threaten her with violence again without getting himself into a world of trouble.

The thought makes her smile.

-

She’s asleep before Ben gets back from his day and he wakes before her once again, leaving another note on the bed next to him.

_I miss you. I hope you have a good day. I will be back earlier tonight, I promise._

She tucks it in her notebook next to the note from the previous day and writes,

_Dear Mr. President,_

_This is a strange place and I don’t know if I understand it. I’m trying to though._

_I don’t really understand you. The more I learn, the more you confuse me. I don’t know how to ask you about your family and why you don't believe what they do without hurting you. I’m a blunt person more often than not, but I’m afraid of hurting you._

_I don’t feel qualified to know whether or not what you do is good, but down in my gut I feel that you’re wrong. And I trust my gut. That scares me. That scares me a lot. Because I want to believe the best in you but my gut is telling me that what you’re doing isn’t your best because it isn’t the best. I don’t want to hold you to an unrealistic standard. I don’t even begin to understand the challenges of your job. But there are some things I just can’t wrap my mind around because they’re just so blatantly wrong that I can’t understand how you’d believe them._

_It’s strange to have known you only a few days and yet to be so nervous about hurting you. I know it’s irrational, I know that it’s not true, but I’m so afraid of people leaving me sometimes. I know you wouldn’t. But if my parents did, why wouldn’t my soulmate?_

That’s a thought that makes her tear up, and she closes the notebook and tucks it away in her bedside table again.

She has her pelvic exam—thoroughly unpleasant—and they insert her IUD which _hurts like a motherfucker_ and Rey ends up in Ben’s bed with a hot water bottle and several painkillers, waiting for the pain to ebb, which it seems determined not to do.

She won’t call it a complete waste of a day, though. Bazine comes in at two o’clock to tell her that Tenel has accepted the position and will start next week.

“She impressed you, then?” Rey asks.

“She’s competent,” Bazine shrugs. “I wouldn’t say I’m impressed, but it also takes a lot to impress me.”

“You’re something else,” Rey mutters. Bazine brings her a bowl of ice cream without being asked which is how Rey realize that she’d taken that as a compliment.

She tries comming Finn again and this time—this time she gets through.

“Taking ten again,” Finn coms to Dex and Rey could cry.

“Hi,” she says into the com.

“Tell me everything,” Finn commands and she can hear his smile, can hear the Jakku heat in his voice.

“Well, I’m in bed right now,” she says. “And everything hurts.”

“What’s wrong?” he asks immediately.

“I had an IUD put in and they told me it would be bad but I didn’t think it’d be _this_ bad.”

“Better or worse than getting kicked in the shins?” Finn asks.

“Remember that time Rose’s cramps were so bad she almost vomited?”

“Yes.”

“That.”

“Oh god. Are you alone?”

“Yes, but Bazine just brought me ice cream and I have a hot water bottle, so I think this is about as good as it gets.”

“Who’s Bazine?”

And she tells him about Bazine, and Tenel, and the party the other night. “And I just feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. And I keep thinking I do—I talk to Bazine and Tenel, I talk to Ben, I talk to whoever, and I feel like I can maybe do this because they believe in me. But the second I’m on my own again, it’s gone, and I’m just this Jakku kid who got swept up in all this.”

“He’s good, though? The President? He treats you well?”

Rey can hear the concern in Finn’s voice.

“Yeah,” she says. “He’s really sweet. And so caring. I—I—” she doesn’t let herself say it. If she lets herself say it, she might end up crushed.

“Rey?”

Because if anyone can hear the trepidation in her voice from thousands of mile away, it’s Finn.

“His politics are bad,” she mumbles. “Like really bad. I think. I’m still trying to understand them. But I think they’re bad. And he’s so wonderful to me, but I don’t understand how someone who’s that wonderful to me can believe some of the things I think he believes.”

There’s a pause, like Finn is waiting for her to continue. When she doesn’t, he sighs. “It’s early days, yeah? You still have to get used to one another. Me and Rose had our stuff in the early days too, remember?”

“Yeah,” Rey mumbles, “It just doesn’t feel equal, though. He’s the _President_.”

“So? You’re the people. He works for you.” Bazine had said something similar to her a few days before. “I promise you, silencing yourself about anything will only make getting used to one another harder, not easier. You don’t have to be something you don’t want to be just for him. He’s your soulmate. He should get that.”

“Yeah,” Rey says again. “I just—yeah.”

“You like him, though? That’s rock solid?”

“Yes,” Rey tells him a little more firmly. “I really do. That’s why it’s hard.”

And she can see Finn grinning as he takes that as a transition to his next question. “Sex is good? I promise I won’t leak it to the press.”

“Has there been a lot of press?” she asks, frowning.

“A bit,” he replies. “Mostly hounding me and Rose. Dex has been good about it, but he’s also Dex, so it’s hard to actually get anything out of him.”

“I bet Plutt’s loving all this,” Rey says darkly. “All the attention, all the—”

“He got arrested,” Finn says and Rey’s eyes widen.

“What?” she breathes.

“Yeah. The feds shut his place down a few days ago. Money laundering and racketeering I think?”

“Shit,” Rey breathes. She’d told Ben that he’d been not fully above board, but she hadn’t expected this.

“Yeah,” Finn says. “Anyway, it’s mostly me and Rose and I promise I won’t tell them what you said about your sex life so tell me.”

Rey blushes. Because they haven’t _had_ a lot of sex yet, but what they’ve had has been…

“It’s been good,” she says. “He’s been really busy, so we haven’t—not a lot, I mean. But it’s been good and he makes me feel…” she waves her hand, tearing up and she can hear Finn make a happy noise on the other side of the phone. “It’s what soulmates are supposed to be, right? Feeling warm and safe and like you’re the center of the universe?”

“I’m so happy for you,” he says into the com. “So happy, Rey.”

“Yeah, me too,” she says and even as she says it a hollow feeling voids her chest. “I feel selfish sometimes because I want him more than he can be around.”

“That’s not selfish,” Finn tells her firmly. “It’s not selfish to want to spend time with someone you love.” Finn had said it; Rey hadn’t. Her breath catches in her throat. How easily he’d said it, but of course he would. He has had a soulmate for years. It can be casual for him. One day, it might be casual for Rey too.

“I feel like I’m taking him away from people who need him.” People Tenel thinks he doesn’t actually help, even if he thinks he does.

Finn doesn’t have anything to say to that, though. He stays quiet for a long moment and Rey just…

“I wish you were here,” she says. “Ben said you needed a background check but then you could come.”

“Wild fathiers couldn’t stop me,” Finn tells her. “Rose and I have been talking, actually.”

“Yeah?” Rey asks.

“It wouldn’t be right away. And it’ll take a lot of...planning. But we were thinking about moving. Trying to get closer to you. Because _fuck_ Jakku. We were here because of you, and if you’re not here anymore then like fuck am I staying.”

And Rey laughs. She laughs so hard that it makes the pain in her uterus throb a little more.

“How long do you think it’ll take?” she asks him and he hesitates.

“That’s the thing. It might be a while. Moving’s expensive and we figured we’d sell most of our stuff here and get it new in the city, but also like...budgeting for Coruscant and budgeting for Niima Outpost are not the same thing. It’d be another matter if I hadn’t been dishonorably discharged, but I don’t get stipends the way I should.” There will always be that bitter bite to his voice for that. He’d defied orders once, hadn’t fired his blaster, and it had been a dishonorable discharge and no stipends in the few years after the end of his service or help paying for college which was why he’d enlisted to begin with.

“No,” Rey agrees, disappointment flooding her.

“So it’ll probably be...a few months. A year tops. It depends on how visiting works. Like if we have to buy flights out to see you—”

“I’m sure we could—Ben would—” Rey says at once. Shuttle tickets are _expensive_. He’d sent Airforce Three to come and collect her. Surely he can do that for Finn and Rose so they don’t have to spend hundreds of credits on a shuttle ticket they can’t afford. “We’ll think of something.”

“Yeah, a little largesse could go a long way,” Finn says. “Not that I’m begging or—”

“Finn, the amount of money these people have,” Rey says, dropping her voice. “The dress I was wearing to that party cost more than two thousand credits. And it’s not the only one that Bazine got for me.”

Finn’s quiet for a long moment. Then,

“Fuck.”

“I know.”

“Don’t _ever_ tell Rose, she’ll flip a shit.”

“I won’t,” Rey promises.

“Wow that’s—”

“Yeah.”

“Was it a good dress?”

Rey remembers the way the silk had felt against her skin, the dazed expression on Ben’s face when he’d seen her in it.

“Yeah,” she smiles. “It was a good dress.”

Finn’s break ends, and he hangs up, telling her his next few days at Dex’s.

“I’ll find a number so you can reach me too,” Rey says, realizing she hadn’t done that yet.

“Something tells me it’ll be harder to get hold of you than it will be for you to get hold of me,” he says. “Mrs. First Lady.”

“Stop,” Rey says, flushing. “You’re on my list of three.”

“Your list of three?”

“The people with unfettered access. You, Rose, and Ben. Got it?”

She hears Finn’s amused huff. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he says. “Or rather, when I see you.”

“Soon,” she says. “Soon I promise.”

“Wild fathiers couldn’t stop me,” he repeats. Then, added hastily because she’s sure that Dex is shouting at him, “Gotta go.”

And he hangs up, leaving Rey alone and aching in bed.

-

True to his word, Ben’s up in the Residence before seven that night, kicking off his shoes and taking off his jacket and tie and climbing into the bed next to her, pulling her to his chest.

“How are you feeling?” he asks her.

“It still hurts a lot.”

He kisses her. “Better?”

“Not really, you should kiss me more.”

So he does, his tongue sweeping into his mouth, his arms holding her tight to his chest.

“What do you want for dinner?” he asks her.

“I am not hungry.”

“That strikes me as a lie.”

She snorts and brushes her lips against his neck.

“I am hungry, but I’m not wholly sure I’d be able to keep food down right now.”

“Do you want stronger painkillers?” he asks her sharply.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Ok,” he says but when she flinches as he rolls them both over, he says “Yeah, I’m getting you stronger painkillers.”

She hears him com to one of the doctors and a few minutes later there’s a knock on the door and the man who’d given her her checkup yesterday appears in his dress uniform, carrying a plastic cup that contains a pill the size of a fathier tranquilizer.

“Don’t mix with alcohol,” he tells her, before she swallows it down with water and Ben thanks him and he removes himself from the bedroom.

She snuggles back down against Ben’s chest and it’s not long before she can no longer keep her eyes open.

She wakes to an empty bed and another note.

_Even a few short minutes of you is worth it. I hope you’re in less pain._

_I’m flying to Hapes today but will be back late tonight. I hope you’ll still be awake, but if you aren’t, at least I’ll get to hold you tonight when I go to sleep._

It makes her eyes prickle, makes her throat go tight.

She’d been unconscious for most of the night he’d taken off to spend with her.

She presses her face into the pillow that he’d probably slept on and lets the tears squeeze out of her eyes for a few minutes. She learned a long time ago to trust her body when she needed to cry. Crying meant that the pain left you and you could breathe again.

And she is breathing again. Her abdomen is still very sore, but not so much that she doesn’t think she can eat. She has breakfast, dresses herself and then meets with Bazine and Tenel, who are presenting her with a list of charity events that she’s been invited to over the course of this week. Tenel is not officially on payroll yet, but Bazine doesn’t seem to want to wait for her background check to clear for her to get started, so here she is with a guest pass.

“How do they align with the President’s schedule?” she asks and Tenel glances at Bazine.

“We can check,” Tenel says.

“If there’s time when he’s free, I’d like to spend it with him,” Rey says, feeling like a silly lovesick girl. But she is. And she’s hated not being able to see him. The one time she’d seen him since they had sex had been for five minutes in his office.

“We’ll prioritize it,” Tenel says. “I know his social secretary has been in touch about a state dinner with the representatives from Dagobah that you should be in attendance for.”

Rey nods.

“And what about today?” she asks.

She spends the whole day with Tenel and Bazine. Both seem to be on the same page about one thing—Rey’s request to actually understand the political setup of the country. They have a whiteboard set up in the study in the Residence, and Tenel spends most of the afternoon drawing squiggles and connections and writing names and words on it. Rey takes notes in her little notebook right next to where she’d slipped Ben’s note from this morning and the last little letter she’d written.

By the end of several hours in what Tenel calls the war room, her head is swollen with words and phrases, different departments and what they do, the relationship between Congress and the presidency and the courts, different dignitaries within the governments, how the Secretary of Agriculture is a different kind of secretary from the Social Secretary to the First Lady.

“We’re just calling you the First Lady,” Bazine says. “That’s what everyone’s been calling you in the press for the past few days, and the Glass Palace Communications Director says we should just go with it. It makes it easier that way, and technically, the role doesn’t have to be filled by a wife. President Windu's was his daughter.”

“And it looks good on a resume,” Rey says to Bazine. “Chief of Staff to the First Lady?”

Bazine gives her a wry smile. “Doesn’t have a bad ring to it, no.”

Rey’s uterus has stopped hurting by the time she has dinner by herself once again, and it’s only as she’s getting ready for bed in Ben’s bedroom that she notices a pile of newspapers from that morning. One has had the front page of it ripped off it and Rey frowns and looks around. In the waste bin by the door, she finds the front page crumpled up.

She picks it out of the garbage and smooths it out and realization dawns over her.

_LUKE SKYWALKER NAMED NEW DIRECTOR FOR THE REVAN SOCIETY _and a picture of the man who had told her that Ben’s pretty eyes had dragged her to the dark side looks sternly up at her.

_Luke Skywalker, uncle to President Ben Solo and twin brother to Leia Organa…_ the article begins and that’s all Rey needs to understand.

That man had been the uncle who’d hated Ben for years, who had refused to speak to him. He’d probably come to that party just to size Rey up. And what—warn her that her soulmate was...what, exactly? The root of all evil?

She swallows. Ben’s politics may be bad, but that didn’t make him evil. She knows evil. Evil doesn’t have a heart, or a soul, and Ben has both. _Maybe you made it worse by assuming the worst of him, _she thinks angrily at the picture of Luke.

And she’s feeling very tired again. What does she think she can say that’ll make him see things from a different perspective when the Director of the Revan Society had failed? When Leia Organa had? Just because his eyes had changed when they’d touched hands didn’t mean that he’d magically want see the world differently, did it?

But she was sure of one thing: Ben’s heart, bruised and battered as it was, had always been there, and throwing him aside without trying to see if he _could_…she didn’t know what. She didn’t know what she wanted him to do. But she also knew that turning her back on him, washing her hands of it—well, that would definitely mean that it wouldn’t happen.

She crumples the page in her hand and throws it back in the waste bin.

_He’s wrong, _she thinks darkly as she snuggles under the blankets of Ben’s bed. _Even if he thinks Ben’s got bad policies, to just cut him from your life like that? Throw him away like garbage?_

Ben had been older, and it hadn’t been his parents, but all she can think about is her parents leaving her behind when she’d been small.

Maybe that’s why she can’t sleep. She’s thinking about that hospital again, thinking about crying and asking if they’d come back and being told to be quiet. She’d waited so long in Jakku, and granted she hadn’t had anywhere else to go, but maybe she’d have _tried_ to get a scholarship instead of dropping out to pay her own bills after Maz had died. Maybe she could have gone to Hapes University like Tenel, and no one would look down their nose at her for having been a mechanic. She could _design_ transports, not just fix them. Maybe she’d have met Ben at some sort of social thing that would have felt natural for her because her life would have gone in a very different direction. Maybe he’d have spoken on her university campus, or she’d have bumped into him somehow and she wouldn’t have had to save hundreds of credits to go to get her blood taken for the Databank.

Maybe she’d be able to stand at his side and not feel like a complete idiot and—

No. No, she’s not an idiot. She is learning. She’d memorized the names of everyone on Ben’s Cabinet that afternoon, she knows what a Cabinet is, she knows why one of them has to stay behind during the State of the Union, she knows what the order of succession is, she knows who Ben’s Vice President is, she is learning.

She’s learning.

It may never feel natural to her, but she refuses to let herself drown in it.

She tosses and turns for a long while before she hears the sound of the elevators opening and footsteps coming down the hall. She turns on the lamp by the bedside just as Ben opens the door and he sags with relief at the sight of her.

“Hi,” he says, and he practically throws himself across the room to hug her.

“Hi,” she mumbles into his neck, her hands helping him out of his suit jacket, tugging his tie loose and pulling him up onto the bed with her.

“You feeling better?” he asks her, and as a response, she reaches down and unzips the front of his pants, slipping her hand into his underwear and grabbing him.

He groans, and his lips are on hers, his hands up the front of her t-shirt and cupping her breasts as she strokes him until he’s fully hard, which does not take very long at all.

He lines himself up against her before she’s even fully out of her pajama pants. He’s not even fully out of his suit pants—he doesn’t seem to care. He’s just pushing her shirt up so that her breasts are bared and slowly pushes into her. “I’m not—” she whispers and he stops at once, looking at her almost frantically.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not ready,” she says. “I need a little more—” and his lips are on hers, his penis is gone, and his fingers are now tracing circles against her slit, running up and down on either side of her labia until she’s bucking her hips up to meet him and panting into his mouth. She kicks off her pajama pants fully when he tries this time and this time it’s easy, this time, she stretches happily around him as he buries himself in her.

It feels so perfect, so much better than the other night. Maybe because she’s missed him, or maybe because that same warmth she feels whenever he holds her hand is filling her sex, spreading throughout her entire body but she pulls him closer, deeper, wants him to be there inside her always.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck, fuck—I—Rey—”

And heat floods her cunt and he is shaking a little over her, his face contorted in pleasure until he pulls himself out of her. He’s flushing slightly.

“I didn’t think that condom was going to dull the sensation that much,” he mutters.

“I’m just that sexy,” Rey tries to joke, arching her back up slightly. Ben bends his head and kisses her, long and deep and everything she could ever possibly want.

“You are,” he whispers. “Also your cunt is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” he says. He still sounds dazed.

“Oh?”

He nods. “I—” he pauses. “It’s like everything I feel is so much stronger when I’m with you. I see more clearly, I smell more clearly, I feel more precisely. Like when you were jerking me off earlier, your hand felt just hotter than mine when I do that. And it was sort of like that, but inside you and already inside you is so…” he stops, his eyes losing focus a bit. Then he shakes his head, as if trying to settle himself. When he looks at her again, his eyes are practically glowing. “I can’t wait until I can last longer. I can’t wait to make it last.” And his lips are at her neck again, and then he’s kissing his way down her stomach like he had in that hotel a few days before, kissing until he’s between her legs, licking away his cum first, then nuzzling at her lips and slipping is tongue between them, curling it for just a moment as he rubs her clit with his fingers.

And Rey knows what he means. She does. Because she’d felt it too when he’d been inside her just now, and she’d felt it in Mimban, and now she feels it again, just how fast her stomach pools with fire, just how quickly her whole body is trembling, gasping, contracting beneath his tongue. The whole world is spinning, the whole world is still and there’s nothing beyond this bed, nothing beyond her and Ben.

He slips his fingers inside her as she comes, her muscles clutching at him as blood pumps hot and strong through her veins. Her hands twitch towards his hair and she tries to make her eyes—which seem to have closed of their own accord—open so she can look at him.

He’s watching her now, his head lifted slightly, his fingers stroking lazily inside her. Then he lowers his head once again and presses a kiss, very lightly, to her clit. “The things you do to me,” he whispers and he curls his fingers up into her once again. “The things you make me want to do to you.” He kisses her again.

He pulls his fingers out of her slowly and clambers up the bed, resting his head on her chest. She lets her eyes close again.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispers to him.

He kisses the side of her breast. “I’m here,” he promises her. “And I’ll always come back for you. I promise.”

Her chest tightens and the tears well in her eyes and she drops her head to kiss the top of his.


	8. Chapter 8

On Primeday, Mitaka takes Rey to a suite of rooms on the far side of the Glass Palace. “This will be your office,” he tells her. “Bazine pointed out that running your team out of the Residence wouldn’t end well, so we moved the speechwriters across the street.”

The suite is paneled in heavy dark wood that stands in sharp contrast to the tall, wide windows that face out to the back gardens of the Palace. “That’s your office,” he tells her, pointing. “That’s Bazine’s,” he says. “And anyone else you end up hiring will have desks out here.”

“We have someone starting later today,” Rey tells him smiling.

“I heard you were looking for a Social Secretary,” Mitaka says. “Glad you found one so quickly, that must be a relief.”

“For Bazine more than me,” she says. “But I’m looking forward to working with her.”

Mitaka excuses himself and Rey settles behind the desk, opening her little notebook and reviewing her notes from the day two days before once again. She’s glad that she remembers everything.

“House Majority Lead, Fouburr,” she recites before looking down at her notebook and smiling. “House Majority Whip, Darpopi.”

She can do this. She can learn this. This isn’t going to be impossible.

“Ms. Johnson, good morning,” Tenel says, standing in the door. She has a staff badge around her neck this time and looks excited.

“Good morning,” Rey replies with a smile.

“I’m with IT in a few minutes to get my accounts set up, but then I’ll begin working on your schedule.”

“Thank you,” she replies.

It takes twenty minutes before Bazine comes knocking on her door. She does not look pleased.

“The President wants to see you.”

“What’s the matter?”

Bazine gives her a look. “I think it has something to do with your staffing choices.”

“Right,” Rey says slowly. “Did he say when?”

“Mitaka said, ‘oh, whenever’ which implies to me right now.”

Rey gets to her feet, closing her notebook and putting it in one of the desk drawers. Then she makes her way to the Hexagonal Office.

“He’s waiting for you,” Artoo says dryly as Rey enters the outer office and she doesn’t wait to be brought in by Thanisson, she just opens the door.

“Hi,” she says stepping in and closing the door. Ben looks up from whatever he’s reading, his face tight.

He doesn’t approach her, he doesn’t reach out to touch her, or kiss her, he just says, “You hired Tenel Ka Djo?”

“Yes,” Rey says.

“Why?”

“You said I could hire whoever I wanted.”

“Yes, but I didn’t think—” he cuts himself off and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You realize she’s Republic, right? She’s extremely not on board with my agenda?”

“So?” Rey asks. “Who even says I’m on board with your agenda?”

She watches him breathe in and out slowly, watches his eyes, flecked with hers, dart back and forth across her face. She watches as he hears the words she said, watches as something in his face goes flat, and dull, and hurt.

“Do you know what it looks like for my soulmate to have her first hire out of the gate be someone from my opposition party? Do you have any idea?” _He’s focusing on Tenel, not on me. _It hurts him less.

She squares her shoulders. “Who would you have rather I hired? Someone you hand picked for me?”

“No, that’s not what I want. I want you to hire—”

“Who you want me to hire,” she says. “What I want and think I need don’t matter at all.”

“You think I don’t care about what you want or need?” he asks her sharply.

“You’re sort of implying that I don’t care about what _you_ want or need, and that that might be the only reason that I—”

“I think you don’t know what you’ve done,” he cuts in angrily. “And I think you’ve just made everything ten times harder. I am negotiating tax reform and a health legislation bill with congress right now, and do you understand what mixed signals are coming out of the Palace right now if you hire someone who’s so Republic that she’s basically bleeds blue and orange? What are you even trying to achieve?”

“I’m trying to figure that out, Ben. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is a lot to expect me to have already mastered and I’m doing the best I can. I’m not going to try and stab you in the back if that’s what you’re afraid of. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He pauses. There’s a flicker of relief in his face, but it doesn’t last long.

“Ok, so all this is for nothing?”

“It’s _not_ for nothing,” she flares at once. “What do you want from me? To stand still and look pretty on your arm? Because that’s not who I am and I’m trying to figure out how to be myself in this weird world of yours and I’m going to get the help I can from people who I think will help me.”

“And you don’t think anyone in my party will help you?”

“What, you want Snoke to tutor me?” she snaps and Ben’s expression changes very fast. He’s no longer angry, no longer impatient. He looks wary. He looks worried.

“You don’t know him,” he says slowly.

“I met him,” she tells him and he lifts his chin sharply, surprised. “At that fundraiser. I met him.”

Ben lets out a slow breath and she takes a step towards him. “You don’t want him near me, do you?” she points out. “Why do you let him near you? Because he got you elected?”

“Ok that’s enough,” he says at once and she can see she struck a nerve. “You need to fire Tenel Ka Djo.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Rey replies. “She’s on my staff. You said I could hire whoever I want.”

“Yeah, but not her. Not Republic. It’s better this way.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

“Then I’ll have Mitaka fire her. He oversees all staffing on your team as well as mine.”

“Fine. Since it’s your team, not mine, you can make whatever staffing decisions you want,” she says. “It’s not the first time I’ve worked for someone who doesn’t care what his employees think so long as they get the job done,” and she whirls around and flings open the door and stalks back to her office.

_Is it even my office? _she thinks as she throws herself into the chair behind her desk. _Is this all for show, so that I can pretend I have a place in all this? _She’s trembling a little bit. More than a little bit.

Her hands are shaking as she takes the notebook out of her desk.

_Dear Mr. President,_

_Fuck you._

That’s as far as she gets before she bursts into tears and rips the page out of her notebook, tears it into tiny pieces and throws the shreds into the waste bin.

There’s a light tap on the door to her office and Bazine comes in and takes one look at her and closes the door behind her.

“He wants you to fire her, doesn’t he?”

“Coming to say I told you so?”

“No,” she says. “I think you shouldn’t do it.”

Rey looks up.

“Remember that thing I said about how if word gets out that he’s controlling you, it’ll tear him apart? You’ve already hired her. He needs to do damage control. He can’t make you take it back.”

“Tell him that,” Rey mutters.

“No,” she says. “But I will tell Mitaka and see if he can talk the President out of it.”

“Thank you,” Rey says. Bazine retreats and she takes out her notebook again.

_Dear Mr. President,_

_Don’t try and control me. Don’t try and turn me into something I’m not because it’ll make you feel better. I’m trying to figure out how not to do that to you—the very least you can do is extend the courtesy back to me. I want us to be a team, I want us to work together. That does not_ _mean that I do everything you say because you know better than me. Because you don’t always know better than me._

_It’s not fair that you expect me to be perfect without letting me even learn what I need to be. It’s not fair. _

_And I get that your job’s important, but if it is making you say one thing to me when we’re in bed and another thing to me when we’re in your office, I can’t help but wonder which one’s the truth and which one’s the dream, and that frightens me._

_I don’t want to be like your family, putting you down, making you feel like you’re not good enough. But don’t do that to me just because it’s what you know. _

_Because the only thing I learned from my family was that leaving hurts but apparently sometimes it’s what you do. And I don’t want to leave you but my heart is beating so fast right now and it feels irrational, to be this upset, but we’re supposed to be a team, right? We’re supposed to balance one another out, be equals, trust one another?_

_Do you not trust me to love you, to care about you? _

_Because this sort of thing makes me not know if I can trust you._

There are tears in her eyes again before she closes the notebook and gets to her feet to go look out the window.

Everything’s green and beautiful. She can see the flower gardens from here. Idly, amidst her angry sadness, she wonders if Ben or Mitaka had known that when they’d moved the speechwriters. Ben at least seems to fixate on how much she likes flowers.

Thinking of him again makes the tears flow again.

“I don’t want to compare you to Unkar Plutt,” she weeps at the gardens. _I don’t want to think you’re a bully._

Tenel comes in just before lunch. “The President’s Social Secretary reached out. He has an invitation to go to the opera tonight with the Governor of Byss and the Social Secretary wanted to know if we should get a ticket for you as well. You said you wanted to prioritize time with the President but we already have you down to go to Every Child Every House event tonight.”

“I’ll go to the Every Child Every House event,” Rey says quietly. “I said I would. I don’t want to cancel on them.”

“Yes ma’am,” and Tenel makes to leave.

“Tenel?”

“Yes?”

“Is it really going to be bad for his tax reform negotiations that I hired you?”

Tenel pauses, considering. Then she lets out an amused snort. “Honestly I think if he’s smart, there’s a way he can make it easier for himself. Which scares me because I hate what he has in mind for tax policy.”

Rey nods and turns back to the window as Tenel excuses herself.

-

The Every Child Every House event is everything the fundraiser had not been. While there are endless and countless people to talk to and photographers who are constantly taking her picture, there are also children running around, and Rey finds a table full of them coloring in coloring books and draws with them for a good hour, talking to them and listening to them and telling them about Maz, the only foster parent she’d had who’d cared about her. Jannah and Zorri are both there with her, keeping their distance, their eyes flitting from one corner of the room to the other and when Rey speaks with the Executive Director of ECEH, she feels, for the first time since she’d gotten to Coruscant, that she knows what she’s talking about.

She knows what it is to be hungry and unsure where your next meal is coming from, not to trust the adults in your life because they can’t protect you from the hardships of the world, to feel like you don’t matter, like you’re nothing, like you’re nobody.

She stays until well past midnight and by the time she is taking the elevator up to the Residence, her eyes are prickling with tired. She steels herself as the door opens. There’s the guard at the end of the hallway. There are lights on in Ben’s room, but she knows perfectly well that they turn the lights on in the evening for him so he doesn’t have to think about it, so it doesn’t mean he’s there.

On her right, she passes the little gym and pauses. She hears the sound of movements in there through the closed doors and when she opens it, Ben’s there, sitting at a weight machine doing chest presses.

He stops when she opens the door.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” He releases the handlebars of the machine and grabs a towel, wiping sweat from his brow. He gets to his feet.

“How was the opera?” she asks.

He shrugs. “They sang loudly.”

She nods.

“How was Every Child Every Home?”

“It was good,” she replies. “The children were so sweet.”

He nods. He rolls his jaw as though trying to chew back a thought. He doesn’t succeed. “I wasn’t trying to say you had it out for me,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to call you stupid, or—or—”

There are tears in her eyes again. “Ben,” she begins but he keeps talking.

“I’m not trying to tell you _what_ to do, I’m trying to help you. And it hurts that you’re going to Tenel for help instead of me. If you don’t want to fire her, fine. I don’t care. The Communications Director has a job for shit like this and I shouldn’t have said Mitaka would fire her if I wasn’t going to make him because I’m not. But,” he takes a deep breath and Rey cuts in.

“You don’t have time to give me all the help I need,” she says. “You don’t, Ben. I’ve barely seen you in two days.”

“You didn’t come to the opera.”

“I wasn’t invited to the opera.”

“I was inviting you. I was trying to see if you wanted to come.”

“Then say so next time,” she says. “Because it sounded like I was a governor’s afterthought and I’d already told ECEH I was going to be there.”

“You’re never an afterthought,” Ben tells her, taking her hand in both of hers and bring it to his lips. “Never.”

“Neither are you,” she says. “But I’m also not—I _don’t_ know what I’m doing. And I can’t sit around and wait for you to have time for me when you don’t have time for me.”

“I’ll make time for you,” he growls, but she shakes her head.

“You and I both know you can’t. Even our first day together dragged you away. I’m good at looking after myself and I hate waiting, so please let me do the former and don’t make me do the latter.”

Ben swallows.

“I just found you,” he whispers, his breath shaky. “I just found you and I don’t want to lose you. I’m so scared of losing you.”

“You’re not going to,” she tells him.

“When you left this morning, I had this horrible feeling like I’d gone and done something irreparable. That’s what I’m always doing—getting too heated and breaking things. It’s what almost drove my parents apart. And I thought I’d done it to you too.”

She stands on the tips of her toes and presses a kiss to his cheek. His fear is tangible in the air around them, but even as Rey leads him back to his bedroom, as they both strip out of their clothes and shower together, all Rey can think is that she doesn’t think he’s actually afraid of losing her.

She makes herself say it, while they’re standing under the hot water together, while he’s running soap up and down her back even though it’s definitely already clean. “I meant it earlier. I _don’t_ know what I think about your politics. I don’t know that I like them, or agree with them.”

Ben heaves a sigh, but his hands don’t pause in their soaping. “I suppose it was too much to hope,” he mutters. “But it’s also par for the course. At least I’m well practiced in people in my life hating my politics.” She can tell he’s trying to joke, trying to make light of it all, but she can see that bitter sadness on his face.

“I also meant it when I said I wasn’t going to work against you, or try and bring you down, or something,” Rey promises. “I mean it. I want you to…”

“Succeed?” Ben asks wryly.

“Be the best you can be,” she says. “Be happy. I don’t know. But I promise my hiring Tenel isn’t my turning against you.” She presses a kiss to his chest. “I promise.”

“I know,” he says quietly. “I know that. When you’re here in my arms, I know that, and when I’m alone with my head about it, the shadows creep in. But I do know that.”

“What sorts of shadows.”

“The ones I’ve already told you about,” he says. “Just the usual ones. Which is why I—” he swallows and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I get so afraid of losing you. I feel like I already lost all of them, and I don’t think I could stand losing you too.” His arms tighten around her, and she mouths at his chest, sucking his skin lightly.

“I don’t know what I want Ben, but I’m so glad to have you and we’ll keep figuring it out, right?”

“Yeah. We’ll keep figuring it out. We’ll keep trying.” Sincerity burns in his voice, like he needs to believe the words coming out of his mouth.

-

It’s a thought she can’t shake the next day as she ends up at a luncheon honoring Women in Astroengineering, she spends most of the keynote address staring hungrily at the presentations of space ships these women had helped design. Even as she listens avidly to talks about incredible feats of engineering that women had done, all she can think is of Ben’s fear.

She can understand his being afraid of losing her—she’s afraid of losing him too. So many years on her own made her never want to let him go. But given how deeply it had hurt him to lose his family, even if his mother and father still cared about him…something seemed off with that. She didn’t understand that. Because they’d come to him, they’d come for him. And Leia seemed determined to say that whatever her views on his politics, that didn’t mean she didn’t care about him. Was it just the extension of pain of what Luke thought of him in every direction? Did he feel as though there was nothing for him with them, and never could be? Because despite what he’d said last night, it felt as though he _wasn’t_ actually particularly adept at having someone love him despite his politics.

Why _had_ he thrown in with Snoke anyway? She’d never asked him, and she gets the sense that asking Tenel or Bazine will be wholly useless to her. But the question eats at her, especially given how Ben had reacted when she’d said that she’d met Snoke at the fundraiser.

“I’ve gotten that interview approved,” Bazine tells her when they’re getting back in the transport. “With one of the major magazines. It doesn’t really matter which.”

“Oh?” she asks. “You think I’m ready?”

“I don’t think it matters if you’re ready,” Bazine says. “I think the media’s tired of waiting.”

She hands Rey her datapad and begins cycling through screenshots of different news clippings.

_The functional First Lady, who has been kept as much out of the public eye as is humanly possible for a figure so at the center of everyone’s attention…_

_Johnson, who has appeared at some events as a silent spectator, remains an enigma…_

_It makes you wonder what the Glass Palace is hiding, if they’re silencing her or just afraid she’ll spill some tea._

“It’ll only get worse,” Bazine says.

“I was going to say, that doesn’t seem terrible.”

“They’re calling him a coward for hiding you away. Any of the Palace’s attempt to say that you want privacy at this time is just getting ignored.”

“Which I suppose makes sense since I’m starting to leave the Palace every now and then.”

Bazine nods, and turns to Tenel. “_The Hourglass_?”

“_The Chrono_,” Tenel replies. Bazine raises an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“Because if you go to the left and are able to shut them up about her, then that will put an end to it. If you send her to _The Hourglass, _everyone for the Republic will write her off, and that’s not ideal, because if there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that theoretically the First Lady should try and be a non-partisan voice for unity.”

“Theoretically,” Bazine replies dryly, leaning back in her seat. Her eyes are locked on Tenel.

“But if she fucks up in _The Chrono_, the ramifications will be bigger.”

“So we’ll prep her,” Tenel says. “And we’ll see if they can give us the questions beforehand. It’s her first interview, and they’re getting dibs on the biggest story that people actually _want_ to pay attention to. Everyone wants a break from tax reform wars right now.”

“What’s going on with the tax reforms?” Rey asks. Ben had mentioned them the other day too.

“He wants to lower them and stimulate the economy,” Bazine replies.

“That doesn’t sound bad,” Rey says, remembering how bitterly she’d hated having to pay taxes every spring.

“Yeah, but not for people like you were, though,” Tenel says a little bitterly, and Rey grimaces. Because of course not. Why had she let herself think otherwise for a few glorious seconds? “Anyone making under a certain amount each year would still have to pay the same amount. If Hux has his way, it’ll actually go up. Something about how the poor actually are the ones who use the high-cost social services the most.” And, as if the expression on her face weren’t enough, she mutters, “Bastard.”

“Bastard,” Rey agrees darkly. Not, she reminds herself, that Ben’s much better, but at least in this case he might be the lesser of two evils.

“Yeah, you’re going to need coaching,” Bazine says.

“But it’s horrible. Why does he think that’s a good thing?”

“Because lowering taxes on the rich means they have more money to spend, which creates more jobs for everyone else,” Tenel replies evenly, and Rey can tell she’s at least trying to be as neutral as she can be—even if that neutrality doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Yeah, and I told Ben—that sounds dumb.”

“Yeah, she’s _really_ going to need coaching,” Bazine says to Tenel. “And you’re not helping at all right now. It’ll have to be _The Hourglass_ because _The Chrono’_s just going to try and get her to speak horribly about it and then lionize her for speaking out against the President when she doesn’t actually have any power to do anything.”

“I should,” Rey mutters.

“And for apparently wanting to overthrow the Constitution and have her way with politics she doesn’t understand.”

“There’s no need to be rude about it,” Rey says, more than a little stung.

“I’m just telling you how it’ll get spun all over the HoloNet if you say anything like that to a reporter.”

“What if I _do_ think it’s wrong?” she demands.

“‘The President is doing what he thinks is right,’” Bazine supplies. “Or ‘My understanding is that the economy is very complicated and everyone’s working hard to find the right solution.’”

“Or ‘Eat the rich,’” Tenel suggests.

“Says she who comes from the high family of Hapes,” Bazine says more than a little snidely.

Tenel gives her a withering glare and turns back to Rey. “No one—and I mean no one—expects you to say anything bad about Ben. But also,” and she shoots Bazine a significant look, “you shouldn’t have to say anything you don’t believe just to protect him.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to protect him?” Rey says, narrowing her eyes.

“That’s not what I meant,” Tenel says quickly. “What I meant is he’s the _President_. He can defend himself from criticism all around and—”

“When are we going to try and schedule this for?” Rey cuts in.

“I have to get it cleared by the Director of Communications, first,” Bazine says. “But sooner rather than later. They’ll only get worse the more time passes, especially if people know you’re out and about at events like this, which they will because they’re on your public schedule.”

“I have a public schedule?” Rey asks.

“Yes, it’s given at the daily press briefings.”

“I used to have trouble keeping track of my shifts,” she mutters. Another thing to tell Finn the next time she coms him. Which reminds her, “What’s a number I can give to Finn to com me?”

“What?”

“Finn. My best friend. I want him to be able to com me when he’s free. What’s a number I can give him?”

“We don’t exactly go out giving the com numbers to the Glass Palace to...the civilian population,” Bazine says.

“You can give him my mobilecom number if you’d like,” Tenel supplies.

“No, I want him to be able to com when you’re not available. It’s important to me,” she says to Bazine. “He’s on my list of three.”

“I’ll find that for you,” Bazine says after a long moment.

“Thank you,” Rey says. Then she leans back in the seat of the transport. “Can we just ask them not to ask me political questions?” Rey says. “I don’t feel comfortable doing that?”

“Not unless you want the entire press to think you know nothing, which will make all this work meaningless. Never sacrifice your image for anything. It’s the most important asset for anyone who wants to get anything done,” Bazine tells her firmly.

“Silly me for thinking doing something would be getting something done.”

“And this is Coruscant. Doing things here is very different from doing things in Jakku. If you do something, chances are fifty other people are going to try and snatch the credit. The only way you can be _sure_ that they don’t get it is—”

“By maintaining an image,” Rey mutters.

“Don’t put it down. It’s important. You’re the one who keeps saying you’re overwhelmed.”

“Yes, because I keep having to be something I’m not,” Rey snaps. “I’m not a political mastermind. I’m not. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what my place is in all this.”

Bazine sighs once again.

“Listen, that’s going to get old fast,” she tells Rey.

“What is?”

“You saying you don’t know what you want. You do know what you want, you’re just afraid to go out and get it.”

“I’m not afraid,” Rey says at once.

“Oh yeah?” Bazine asks.

“Yeah.”

“Prove it to me.”

-

Rey’s on the treadmill when Ben appears in the Residence.

“You’re up early,” she says smiling. It’s not even six o’clock yet, and here he is. She turns off the treadmill and goes over to him to give him a quick kiss. “Does this mean I get you to myself this evening?”

“I wish,” Ben says wistfully. His hand is resting on her waist and there are dark circles under his eyes. She wonders if there will ever be a time when there aren’t. She wonders if there’ll ever be a time when he comes upstairs at six o’clock and she has a whole evening just to be with him. “There was a last minute dinner put on my calendar. You’re invited if you’d like to come.”

“Of course I’d like to,” she says. “If you’re there.”

“It’s with Snoke,” he says and Rey stiffens.

“He wants to talk about the tax reform negotiations. He’ll be there, as will Hux. It’s a strategy session, but he said you’d be welcome if you’d like to see how the sausage gets made.”

He doesn’t sound excited.

“Do you want me there?” Rey asks quietly, not because she doesn’t think he wants her around, but because every time she’d mentioned Snoke to him, his reaction had been that he wanted at least a mile between the two of them at all times.

“I always want you there,” he says quietly, but he looks nervous.

“Then I’ll come,” she says. “Let me just shower quickly.”

She does, and puts on a simple dress, and then meets him in the bedroom, where he’s changing his shirt and tie.

They walk hand-in-hand to the elevator, then down to the portico where they get into a waiting transport.

“Bazine is working on getting me scheduled for an interview,” Rey says to him when the door closes behind them. “She says the press is starting to get antsy that I haven’t spoken with them directly.”

“Yes—I think that’s a good idea,” he says, sounding like his mind is a mile away. Rey nods. Her hand is still in his, she still feels warm, but she wishes the silence were easy, relaxed, like the silences after they have sex where they’re drowning in how they feel. This feels tense. This feels like Ben’s afraid of whatever awaits them at Snoke’s.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks him.

“I’m not afraid,” he replies automatically, reminding her all too distinctly of herself in a transport earlier that day.

She lifts his hand to her lips, and murmurs, “Ben.”

He looks at her.

“Snoke is…” he does that thing where he looks like he’s chewing back words that he wants to say, “exacting. He doesn’t particularly believe in negotiation. He thinks hardlining’s the only way to go, which is part of why he’s as popular and successful as he is. It’s his way or the highway.”

“But?” Rey prompts.

“But the coalition on the left is too strong for his hardline to pass the House. Which means negotiations have to happen, and I have two congresspeople from our party working on the bill with them right now. But he’ll just say that it’s that the Presidency is weak right now.”

Rey frowns. “You’re not weak,” she says.

“I’m not,” he agrees. “But the Executive is right now. Both Houses of Congress aren’t big on the direction I want to take the country in, so it’s just not going to happen if we don’t negotiate.”

“Because _they_ dictate tax policy, not the Executive,” Rey says proudly. She remembers that one from her lessons. Ben looks at her and his face softens a little bit as he sees the pride on her face.

“Exactly,” he says. “And then he’ll likely say something like how if he’d backed Hux over me, then we wouldn’t have this issue and then we’re off to the races and there I go, feeling like a failure again.”

He frowns, looking suddenly shy, as though he’s said too much.

“What do you want?” Rey asks him quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“What is…” she thinks a moment then snorts.

“What?”

“I had this exact conversation with Bazine earlier today,” she mutters. “Except I think mine’s harder than yours.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know my place in all this,” Rey says. “And I don’t know how to figure out what I want because of that. You _do_ know your place in all this, and the wider scenario, and the lay of the land—what’s your best case scenario for what you want? Not Snoke, not...” Not your parents, she doesn’t say, “anyone else.”

Ben looks at her for a long moment. His thumb strokes hers as he thinks.

“I don’t really know,” he says. “It’s a hard situation to be in. When the body you need to get things done stands in opposition to what you want to do.”

“What sorts of compromises would you make?” she asks.

“Ultimately it’s not my _job_,” he replies almost vehemently. “That’s the reason the President isn’t a legislative function. I can try to influence, which is probably why Snoke wants to talk to me because he doesn’t think I’m doing enough. But the Party of the Republic essentially wants _nothing_ to do with anything I might try because of my party affiliation which makes it hard to do anything I want short of threatening them which I won’t do.”

“Does Snoke think you should?” Rey asks.

“Yes,” Ben bites out. “That’s how he operates, isn’t it?”

“Did he ever threaten you?” Rey asks quietly and Ben looks at her sharply. He doesn’t reply right away, but when he does say _no_ it’s clipped, short, and she knows that there are a million qualifications to that statement. _Even if he didn’t threaten you that doesn’t mean he didn’t manipulate you. _She hates that thought—that anyone could have manipulated him.

“Anyway,” Ben sighs, looking away from her again, “at the end of the day it’s on _Congress_ to figure this out and for me to sign the damn thing.”

“Would you sign something you didn’t like?”

“Not if I thought it was terrible,” he said. “They may have a majority but they don’t have a veto override majority.” _Two thirds, _Rey supplies silently, proud of herself once again for remembering.

“And do you think they’ll give you something terrible?” she asks.

“No, because they don’t have the votes for a veto override. But they’ll kick and scream about it, and Hux will want it to be more what we want than what they want and sometimes I want to tell Snoke that Congress got elected too and maybe next time he should put his money into winning that instead of winning the Presidency, since it seems so set on ripping apart everything I want to do.”

“Why didn’t he do that?” Rey frowns.

“Because he wants the courts,” Ben replies at once. “Congress and the President...they can undo what a previous administration has wrought if they hate it, and they get elected every few years, so he always has another shot if he misses once. Judges are for life, so if you get someone young and qualified on the bench, that’s fifty years you don’t have to worry about your laws getting ruled unconstitutional.”

“Oh,” Rey says. She hadn’t thought much about the courts, though Tenel had definitely told her about them.

“Yeah.” Ben lets out a humorless laugh. “He probably doesn’t actually give a shit about what happens so long as I nominate the judges he wants nominated when the opportunities arise.”

“So then why are you giving a shit about what he wants?” she asks. “Why don’t you just do what you want?”

Ben picks at a loose thread on his jacket with the hand that’s not in hers. His thumb pauses in its stroking of hers. “You hit the nail a little too hard on the head earlier—what do I even want?” he asks. “The longer I do this job, the more I don’t even know.”

But before Rey can ask him what that even means, the transport stops in front of a huge house and Ben opens the door and gets out of the transport while one of the praetorian guards open the door on Rey’s side and gives her a hand out.

Ben rounds the back of the transport and presses a kiss to her cheek before silently leading her inside, his hand on the small of her back.

Snoke’s house is black, and red, and gold. The walls and hangings are a deep crimson, the furniture is all sleek black metal, and the lamps dotting the hallway and living room that Ben takes her into are all gold.

“Ahh. Mr. President,” Snoke says. He’s sitting. “Hope you won’t mind that I don’t stand. My hips are acting up again.”

“Please,” Ben says before turning his attention to the man standing next to Snoke. “Senator.”

“Mr. President,” Hux says before turning to Rey. “Ms. Johnson.” He steps forward and gives her a brief, uncomfortable kiss on the cheek.

She sits, as does Ben but he doesn’t take her hand this time.

“I was just saying to our Minority Lead,” Snoke says, inclining his head to Hux, “That the world would truly be a better place if the entire leadership of the Party of the Republic conveniently disappeared.”

“It would make life simpler,” Ben agrees.

“Between this tax reform and the racket they’re making about health care reform, I can safely say—your mother’s legacy lives on.”

“She’ll be delighted to hear it,” Ben says, sounding almost bored.

“What health care reform?” Rey asks.

“Trying to make it so that the government covers all medical fees,” Snoke says sounding bored, “Ridiculous. Changing from the system we have currently in place would lead to a recession the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. Can you imagine the cost? It’s not cheap, health care.”

“No, it’s not,” Rey says darkly, thinking of Finn once again. He’d be able to come visit her sooner, to move out here with Rose sooner if he didn’t have to pay however many hundreds of credits every month for being kept alive.

Snoke gives her a patronizing smile. “You think I’m wrong to say this?”

“I think people shouldn’t have to pay to live,” she says, and Hux lets out a truly condescending laugh.

“Oh, is your soulmate in your mother’s party, Mr. President? She sure sounds like it. Or is it just that Tenel Ka Djo has already indoctrinated her?”

“My friend Finn was in a transport accident five years ago and he’s still paying off the bills from the surgery he was rushed to.”

“Should have driven more carefully then,” says Snoke and Rey feels her jaw drop as she looks at him. “It’s a tragedy, it is. And I’m glad your friend is alive.” He doesn’t sound it, Rey notes furiously. “But the _state_ shouldn’t be responsible for paying for that. The _state_ didn’t get him into a transport accident, and the doctors who saved his life deserve their income too.”

“I would think that the _state_ would want to protect its investment in the tax revenue he represents,” Rey retorts hotly.

Ben’s hand comes to rest on her back but she ignores it as she glares at Snoke.

“We’ll deal with the health care reform later,” Snoke says, completely dismissing her and turning back to Ben. “Do you think you’ll be able to take care of the Kuatans?”

“They’re usually pretty resistant to doing anything the Glass Palace wants,” Ben says. “But I can endeavor.”

“They certainly don’t like the aggressive tax schema the Republic has put together,” Snoke says. “I’m sure they can redirect their spite elsewhere.”

And so the conversation goes. Snoke completely ignores Rey’s presence, Hux does too, and Ben’s hand stays on her back, but it’s like she isn’t in the room at all. They stay in the living room for another hour before they make their way into a dining room to eat. Rey’s stomach is rumbling. It’s much later than she expected.

It’s over dinner that exactly what Ben had predicted comes to pass.

“If you can’t even influence the vote, what even is the point of having gotten you elected?” Snoke demands, staring down his nose at Ben. “At least Hux’s incompetence makes sense because they aren’t going to listen to him at all if he’s in the Senate with them, but _you_.”

Ben glares at Snoke. “I’m exerting what influence I have.”

“Maybe if you spent a little less time up her skirt and a little more time doing your job, it wouldn’t be an issue,” Snoke continues as though he hadn’t heard Ben at all. Rey’s mouth goes dry. “You’ve been so distracted lately. You are the most powerful man in the country and what do you have to show for it?”

Rey stands and it’s the first time that any of them have looked at her in half an hour. “Where’s your restroom?” she asks.

“Down the hall on the left,” Snoke says waving a hand and Rey retreats from the room.

She’s smart enough to know that if she throws her soup bowl at Snoke, that’s not going to do anyone any good, even though it would have the potential to give him some solid burns. That he’d have to pay to have treated because the state wouldn’t cover it.

She closes the bathroom door behind her and stares at herself in the mirror.

_Ok,_ she tells herself. _So Snoke is worse than Unkar Plutt._

By a mile.

Unkar Plutt was small potatoes compared to Snoke.

She’d worked for Unkar Plutt because she’d _had_ to.

Did Ben feel as though he _had _to work for Snoke? That’s what it had sounded like in the transport.

_No wonder he feels lost._

There’s a knock on the door.

“Rey?” Ben calls quietly.

She opens the door and he looks relieved that she’s not crying.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was wrong to bring you here.”

“Let’s get out of here,” she says. He hesitates and she watches him calculate, and quickly, what the ramifications of his leaving would be.

“Fuck it, let’s go.”

And he takes her hand and they depart Snoke’s mansion without saying goodbye.

In the transport, Rey’s stomach grumbles and Ben rests a hand on her stomach. “There’ll be food soon, I promise. What do you want?”

“A burger,” she says. “And the saltiest fries known to man.”

Ben reaches into the console in front of him and pulls out a com. “We’re on our way back,” he tells whoever picks up on the other end. “We’ll need burgers and fries.”

Rey kisses him, and he cups her face in both of his hands. “Up your skirt,” he says angrily. “What a waste of my time that meeting was. You’re never a waste of my time.”

She smiles.

“What happens if you tell him to go fuck himself?” she asks.

“I lose reelection,” Ben replies, heaving a heavy sigh. “Which I might do anyway. Sometimes I want to put a brick through the window of all this and scream to the high heavens that it’s time to let old things die and we need to rebuild from the bottom up because the way this country was built two hundred years ago didn’t account for things like light switches and mobilecoms.”

Rey feels a smile creep across her face. “Don’t let Bazine hear you saying that. And she calls _me_ revolutionary.”

Ben gives her a look. Then he lets out a laugh. “God could you imagine? I’d get impeached in a heartbeat. I’m supposed to protect the Constitution, not burn it all to the ground. I’d probably get a treason count too.” He shakes his head and glances at her. “Whatever you say in your interview, don’t say that. Don’t want the Party of the Republic to get the wrong idea. I probably wouldn’t rebuild it in a way they’d like.”

“What about Snoke do you agree with?” Rey asks him.

He frowns. Then he looks at Rey and sighs. “I don’t think it’s the state’s responsibility to fix the inequalities that the market inflicts, and I don’t think it’s the state’s responsibility to control the market. We live in a free society, and that means people can do what they want. We can protect people from one another to a certain extent but what actually people do with their own money...that’s their choice. Taxes should be lower, funding should be localized, and people should be treated as adults rather than children when it comes to their own finances.”

Rey feels her brow creasing and her stomach growls.

“That,” she says at last, “is utter bantha poodoo.”

Ben raises his eyebrows at her. “Oh? And suddenly you’re an expert?”

“Because I’m sure you have so much experience with making ends meet,” Rey says. “You don’t know how bad it can get.”

“I do,” he says. “You think I don’t see poverty reports?”

“I told you I used to go to bed hungry,” she said. “I told you that I had to work for a man who’d beat up people in the back because there weren’t a lot of options for keeping myself alive. Jakku government _isn’t_ a government. There’s no governing that happens at all. You keep scaling it back and back and back and you aren’t going to have freedom and adults who choose to do better and be better. You have bullies and no one to protect the people who just want to sleep at night.”

“Well, Jakku has other issues going against it.” Rey raises her eyebrows and Ben raises his hands as if defending himself. “No, listen. It doesn’t have any sort of arable land, so there can’t be an agricultural backbone; it doesn’t have any major connections to rivers so there was never trade which meant that there are barely any cities in it at all. It’s the bane of a functioning market economy.”

“So it sounds to me like the system should be flexible enough to make it so that a kid growing up in Jakku isn’t fucked just for being born where they’re born,” Rey replies. “It’s almost like there should be a little more structure, not less.”

“And that’s the system we have,” he replies. “That’s why the states have their own government. But something that the federal government did to help Jakku would be useless in Hapes. It’s not fair to Hapes to institute something like that.”

“And it’s not fair to Jakku to be left to suffer simply because it’s Jakku,” Rey replies. “Which is what you’re doing. Taxes shouldn’t go down on the rich. They should go up.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and Ben closes his eyes, sounding very annoyed when he says, “You sound like my mother.”

“Well, she was right and you’re wrong.”

“And am thus the family disappointment, I get it.”

“I’m not disappointed in you just because I think you’re wrong,” she tells him as the transport pulls up in the portico once again.

“You will when I don’t change my mind,” Ben says, sounding tired, sounding sad as he opens the transport door.

Rey gets out too and he’s waiting for her by the door. She slips her arm around his waist as they walk into the Glass Palace. “That assumes that I don’t know what the larger issue is.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“You’re not happy,” she says. “Which means you want to change something. So why not this?”

Ben stares at her as they wait for the elevator that will take them up to the Residence. “I’m happier than I’ve been in years with you,” he says softly. “Do you think I’m unhappy?” He sounds almost wounded. The door dings and opens and they step inside.

“I think you’re happy with me,” she replies. “I know you are.” She stands on the tips of her toes, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck. “But you’re _not_ happy with everything else. Which means something has to change. My vote’s you never take one of Snoke’s coms ever again.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome to chapter 9 of dear mr president, the chapter in which i don't hold back my love of the west wing (if you thought i wasn't holding it back before, u were wrong, hello and welcome to the most self-indulgent chapter of this fic)
> 
> thank you all so so so so so so so much for your reviews. i'm trying (trying) to climb out of the hole and start replying to them soon but since i know it's been a while i wanted to express once again how grateful i am that you're reading this and WE'RE LIKE A MONTH AWAY FROM TROS HOLY SHIT

Centaxday dawns bright and early and Rey wakes to another note from Ben in the bed next to her.

_You’re going to be wonderful today. I cannot wait to hear about it, I cannot wait to read it._

She smiles and goes into the bathroom to shower, take care of her skin—which she has begrudgingly noticed is definitely getting softer now that she’s using all this stuff on it—and then goes into the closet to dress.

When, exactly, all her clothes had been removed from her bedroom and placed in the second closet in Ben’s, she does not know. And as for everything else, it’s not like she had a lot to bring over. She didn’t bring mementos of Jakku with her because she’d had none. She had gotten rid of most of the things she’d scavenged from her childhood when she’d moved into that trailer with Finn and Rose. There hadn’t been enough space there for them. Now, she thinks, there might be.

There are six guest bedrooms in the Residence, and Rey’s is the seventh now. Because it’s not her room anymore. Ben’s room isn’t his.

It’s theirs.

Their bed, their room, their little corner where—except in the middle of the night when the Joint Chiefs of Staff summon him to an emergency in the Situation Room—the presidency can’t follow them.

It feels like more of a haven than any home she’s ever had. She’d been happy with Finn and Rose, but a trailer in Jakku doesn’t really foster a sense of security, especially when you could hear people’s drunken fights from a few trailers down the road. Here, she is safe, and warm, and clean, and fed, and can think about things other than how to survive. Here, she has her soulmate, who pulls her into his arms constantly, and makes her feel like she matters.

Not that any of this is helping her now as she rifles through her clothing, trying to find the right thing to wear, a towel wrapped around her middle. Bazine’s not here yet. Rey had woken earlier than she’d planned because she had wanted to pick what she was wearing. There’s going to be a photoshoot, and she’s sure Bazine will kick and scream about not getting to choose, but Rey is holding firm.

This is supposed to be her introduction to the world.

She doesn’t have to be dressed like a child.

Especially when all her clothes are clothes that Bazine had approved already, and she hadn’t even _gotten_ them herself, so really what was the big deal?

She settles on a plain white top and a grey cardigan over a pair of heathery-soft pants. She’s tying her sneakers on when Tenel comes in.

“Hello,” Rey says, surprised.

“Bazine’s at the dentist,” Tenel says. “She wanted me to check in on you.” She eyes Rey and takes a deep breath and says, “Let’s go then.”

The interview will be held in the Map Room, and when Rey arrives, they are already setting up some cameras. Everyone pauses when she comes in, and a woman who looks to be about Leia’s age steps forward, holding out her hand.

“Ms. Johnson,” she says not quite warmly, but Rey doesn’t get the sense that it’s cold. “I’m Jyn Erso.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Rey says. There are muffins on the table behind the camera and Rey realizes in that moment she hasn’t eaten yet.

“Shall we start with or end with photos?”

Tenel answers before Rey can. “Let’s start, and if we don’t like what we get we’ll take more at the end.”

Rey tries to smile as the flash of the camera blinds her. The photographer moves her around the room, angles her face, angles her limbs, changes the light, tries to make her smile, but she’s unbelievably tense the whole time.

“Nothing to be nervous about,” Jyn tells her.

“Never done an interview before,” Rey says.

“It’s just a normal conversation, I’ll just record what we say and add a bit of color to it later,” Jyn says. “Don’t worry. Forget the recorder is even here.”

“I doubt very much that will happen, but I’ll try,” Rey smiles and the cameraman takes a picture. She blinks and makes a face. There are colored stars in her eyes.

“Shall we start?” Jyn asks.

“Only if I can have one of those muffins.” She takes one, rips off a piece, and puts it in her mouth. She feels better almost at once. “It’s amazing what food can do.”

“Yeah?” Jyn asks and she turns on the recorder. “How so?”

“It just...It makes you feel better.”

“It does,” Jyn agrees. “Important to get three meals a day.”

“Never had that before I came here,” Rey says slowly. That’s what she’s supposed to do, right? Talk about herself.

“No?”

Rey shakes her head. “On days I worked at the diner, I could rely upon getting at least one meal, but on the whole, there was no promise of anything. It was rent or dinner more than a few times a month, and those were the sleepless nights.”

“Have you been sleeping better now that you’re eating regularly?” Jyn asks her and Rey is very proud of herself for not blushing at the implications of _that_ particular question.

“Took me a while to get used to how soft the beds are,” she laughs. “It was some padding on the floors for most nights for me before I came here. But yes, I’m sleeping better now on the whole.”

And it goes from there. Her childhood in the foster system, dropping out of high school because why would she go to college, leaving behind her friends in Jakku. Jyn is very careful with her questions, always leaving room open for more while still letting Rey choose how she wanted to answer them. She doesn’t ask political questions, which relieves Rey tremendously, but after the fourth or fifth time Rey has to explain that Jakku’s poverty isn’t like anything that people in Coruscant can begin to understand, she gets impatient.

“I truly think there aren’t words that can express how different Jakku is from what people here seem to think it is,” she says. “I think people think it’s small, and empty, and poor, and it is. But it’s crushed as well. There’s no hope out there. No _anything_ out there. That’s why people send their trash there for recycling and landfills—because that’s all that they think Jakku is good for. No thought of the people who are just trying to make ends meet, no _help_ to be had. It’s hungry and hard and everyone acts like I’m sort of fairy tale because I was airlifted out by the President. But you don’t leave that behind. You don’t forget the emptiness in people’s faces, the lack of trust for strangers because you don’t know what they’ll try and take from you if you’re not careful. And it’s so easy not to think about that when you’re removed from it, because why would you think about it? Your trash gets taken away.”

“So you think Jakku needs help from the government?”

“I don’t know what Jakku needs, but it needs _something_ more than it has. No one votes there because no one expects politics to actually do anything to fix the situation, and anyway, it’s not like most people have state IDs to vote—which is required in Jakku because we never knew we needed to vote against the Voter Identity Measure forty years ago.” Something Rey had only learned about the day before and which still makes her angry. “So it’s not even like our elected officials even represent us—they represent the four families that have money and who everyone whispers _get _their money through violence and crime anyway.”

She hears Tenel hiss through her teeth and knows she’s gone too far. Much too far. Jyn’s gaze is steady, and she nods understandingly, but Rey knows she’s hiding the triumph that she got that quote out of someone who lives in the Glass Palace.

-

“It’s the truth, though,” Rey says for the millionth time as she walks with Tenel back to where her office is.

“I know it’s the truth,” Tenel says warily. “And I’m proud of you for saying it, and you _know_ I agree with you, but there’s also going to be major ramifications. God, Bazine’s going to kill me.”

“You won’t get fired,” Rey tells her. “It was my mistake. I should have known better than to say all that stuff.”

“You implied that your elected officials don’t care about their people—this is far more than just putting your foot in your mouth. Both of Jakku’s senators and its one congressperson are in the President’s party.”

“I’ll handle it. It was my mistake.”

“And it was in_The Chrono,_” moans Tenel. “I should have known that when they said they were going to send Jyn Erso, it’d be a problem.”

“She didn’t do anything wrong, I—”

“She’s smart enough to recognize if she pokes the same button twelve times eventually you’ll snap and give her the quote she wants. And she _wanted_ that quote.”

They’re walking through the West Wing when they see Bazine there, her face a little bit swollen and an ice pack pressed to her face.

“How are you feeling?” Rey asks her at once.

“I had woot canaw,” Bazine tells her grumpily. “I have cotton baws in my cheeks and evewything huwts. How was it?”

“Don’t scream where there are people,” Rey begins, “But I may have done something bad.”

“How bad?”

“Implied that Kelvrich Nordau and Stepliam Taplons and…” she pauses. She can’t even remember the congressperson’s name, which bleakly she thinks almost proves her point, “don’t care about their people and weren’t elected fairly?” she says, her own voice getting higher as she watches Bazine’s face darken.

“What the heww made you think I wouldn’t SCWEAM WHEWE THEWE AWE PEOPWE?” Bazine shrieks, and everyone around them pauses, turning to look at them.

“Worth a shot?” Rey mutters.

“How did you wet this happen?” Bazine demands, rounding on Tenel.

“It just happened very fast,” Tenel says at once. “And it was over fast.”

“Oh I don’t cawe how fast it was ovew.” And Bazine is whirling around and marching in the direction of the communications team.

Rey takes a deep breath. This had been the main thing on her schedule today and it’s already over. She has a dinner to go to tonight with Ben, but other than that…

She begins walking towards the Hexagonal Office. She doesn’t want Ben to hear this from the director of communications, an extremely grumpy, curmudgeonly man named Zoby Tiegler who, like Bazine, has no issue telling everyone and everything—including the President—that someone has done something terrible.

She enters the outer office and glances at Artoo. “I don’t suppose he has three minutes.”

“No, but he told me explicitly this morning that if you came by after your interview, you were allowed to break his schedule.”

“Thanks,” Rey says and she goes towards the door, opening it and slipping in.

There’s a meeting happening. The Secretary of Defense, an old man named Moden Canady, and Phasma are sitting on one of the long cream-colored couches but the conversation halts the moment Rey comes into the office.

“We’ll continue this later,” Ben says at once, his eyes on her, a slight frown on his lips. She must be wearing her nervousness well.

Phasma and Canady excuse themselves and Rey crosses the office to sit with him. “I did something.” And she tells him.

Ben has very full lips. They’re red and glorious and she loves it when they kiss her and when they smile at her. The thin line they’ve been reduced to does nothing to help her nerves.

“Where is she?” comes a voice from the outer office, very loudly, very angrily. There’s a pause and then again, “Were you dropped on your head? Were you temporarily unconscious? I want to know what alignment of the stars and planets meant that you let her say that?”

Ben’s grimace only darkens as he looks at the door, then he brushes past Rey to open it.

“Zoby? You have something to say?”

“Mr. President,” Zoby begins stepping into the room with all the force of a thunderhead, Tenel and Bazine on his heels. He stops short when he sees Rey. “Has she told you what happened?”

“She has, and I’d caution you to watch your words,” Ben says quietly.

“He was asking if _I _was dropped on my head, Be—sir,” Tenel says and Ben looks at Tenel. Tenel looks at Ben. For a moment, it looks like both of their brains are breaking for a long moment, encountering one another in this context. _His mother wanted her to be his soulmate, _Rey thinks. She’s not jealous at all—which is a relief. But still, they’ve known one another for years. This must be the first time they’ve seen one another in anything close to a situation like this. Or maybe meeting him when he was a senator—assuming they had met when Ben was a senator—can’t compare to meeting him as the President of the New Galactic Republic in the Hexagonal Office.

“What possessed you to say that?” Zoby is asking Rey. “I’m serious, were there ghosts that came in and possessed you? Did you take some painkillers for a headache this morning?”

“That’s enough Zoby,” Ben says sternly and Zoby falls silent. He turns to Bazine. “When does the article come out?”

“Next issue, which is being weleased on Benduday. Unwess they deway it somehow. I can find out and then bwief you, mistew Pwesident.”

“So help me god, Bazine, if you say the words ‘bwief’ and ‘Pwesident’ ever again,” Zoby mutters.

Bazine glares at him.

“What happened to your mouth?” Ben asks her.

“I had woot canaw,” she replies frustrated.

“That sounds painful.”

“I had _woot_ canaw,” she replies a little huffily.

“Is there anything I can do at all?” Rey asks. “Should I...I don’t know.”

“No,” Zoby says. “You’ve done quite enough already.”

“Zoby,” Ben intones.

“There’s nothing you can probably do,” Tenel says. “But I can try to get Senators Nordau and Taplons on the schedule for—”

“No,” Rey says.

Everyone looks at her.

“I’m not making nice with them just because I said something stupid. I also happen to _believe_ what I said and if it’s going to be a mess, at least let it be an honest one and not a dishonest one.”

“The President needs their votes on the tax bill,” Zoby says.

“And candidly, they’ll do whatever they want to fuck over their people, so they’ll probably sign whatever he wants.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ben shift ever so slightly, his head angled towards her, his breath going still. But there’s barely a moment to acknowledge the implication of her words because Zoby barrels forward.

“Not if they’re afraid for their jobs. Nordau is up for reelection next year.”

“Not that Jakku has anyone to run against him,” Tenel points out.

“Jakku could run a waitress inspired by her words and with a rallying cry that they stand for the people. You think the Party of the Republic won’t pluck someone out of the garbage? Some trash recycling union leader, maybe, or—”

“I think that’s exactly what they’ll do,” Tenel replies. “But I also think they’re more concerned about winning seats back in Ord Mantell and Corellia and those will cost a lot more money. Besides, the Organa Protection isn’t in Jakku, as Ms. Johnson said, so it’ll be hard to even get voters to register.”

“This is still going to be a disaster,” Zoby says loudly. “And we need to do something to fix it. Now.”

Ben has turned away from the group and gone to stare out one of the big tall windows. His lips are still a thin line and Rey gets the impression that if anyone touches him right now, he’ll explode. His whole body looks tightly wound like a metal coil.

_There has to be something I can do, _Rey thinks wildly. _I was right though. And I am right._

“We won’t be able to do anything until the article comes out and we know what Erso has said,” Ben says at long last. “So we can be prepared for the inevitable shit storm, but I think right now yelling about it isn’t going to do anything. Zoby, do what you need to do to be ready, but for the time being, we don’t do anything in anticipation.”

“We can be prepared to say she is taking advantage of a poor girl who has never done an interview before,” Zoby says, thinking out loud.

“No,” Bazine hisses, “Because then no one wiww think she evew knows what she’s talking about.”

“She _doesn’t_,” Zoby yells, but when he turns to look at Rey to continue his tirade, he swallows his words. Rey is glaring at him, hard, and when she speaks, there’s a power in her voice she hadn’t expected.

“I do know what I’m talking about,” she says. “And when I don’t, I learn quickly.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Johnson,” Zoby mutters.

She nods and glances at Ben. Ben’s still looking out the window.

Zoby and Bazine and Tenel file out, closing the door behind them and Rey goes to stand next to Ben. “I’m sorry,” she whispers to him.

He looks at her and sighs, but this time, she notices, her body doesn’t relax.

“I suppose it’s going to get harder and not easier.”

“What is?”

“This,” he says. “Having someone who shares my life and just...has a different...” he waves his hand and lets the silence supply the missing words, “from mine.”

She swallows. She had seen her words sting. But she also isn’t going to pretend she didn’t mean them. What she _didn’t_ mean was to hurt him.

She wonders if she should apologize.

Instead, she asks, “You think what I said was wrong?”

“No,” he says slowly. “In this regard, I think you were wholly justified and I think Zoby is freaking out because he knows that everything is going to get harder. The more you’re in the limelight, the more risk we run that you’ll say something like _the government should cover all health care_—”

“It should,” she interjects.

“—or that the tax plans I’m putting together are draconian—”

“I don’t think they’re helping people.”

“—or that Snoke is a monster.”

Rey doesn’t even need say anything to that one.

“It’s hard enough that my mother says all of these things. That’s already tricky in the public eye, because even if she’s not part of my party, she’s respected for her sheer capacity to get things done. That Voter Registration initiative you talked about—that was a pet project of hers when she was still a freshman senator. She got it done in her first term. And I can do what I can to distance myself from her, from the legacy of my grandmother too, to be my own person, but then you show up and everyone’ll just see…”

“You think they’ll see me and not you?”

“I think the right will see a man who is holding his ground, defying those who let their emotions govern them, and I think the left will continue to think what they already think of me. But I think that, more importantly than that, people will be waiting for you to start going toe to toe with me, for the tone of the Glass Palace to be fraught and for things to fall apart from the inside, rather than…”

Rey seizes his hand and lets her warmth spread up his arm.

“Who cares what they think?” she asks, but even as she asks the question, she hears Bazine insisting tirelessly that what you show people, what people see or think they see is make or break in this town. “Doing what’s right is what matters, Ben. And even if I...I don’t agree, I know you’re trying to do what’s right. I can respect that in you, even if I don’t—” she takes a deep breath and looks up at him. She’s afraid, suddenly. Afraid of the words about to come out of her mouth, afraid of what he’ll think of them, afraid of how he’ll react to them. “Even if I don’t respect the views. I can respect the way you hold them, what you think you are doing and what that says about you.”

_Can you? _a traitor voice whispers in her mind. _Can you really think he’s different than Nordau and Taplons? He’s the _President_, he should know better than this with a mother like his, with a grandmother you really should know more about. You know next to nothing about politics and you know better than this. Why are you letting him get away with it. Because you love him? Because you want to be loved by someone, to think you matter?_

He looks down at her and for the first time ever when she’s been holding his hand, it’s like he doesn’t see her. Her throat tightens.

“And when will that stop?” he muses out loud. “When do you think you’ll stop thinking that I have a good heart, that I’m going to make people you grew up around suffer because my solutions look different from yours?”

“I’m never going to stop thinking you have a good heart,” Rey promises. She needs to believe it. She _does_ believe it—that somewhere in that chest of his, there’s a heart that feels deeply and wants to help people and doesn’t want to neglect or take advantage of them. “Never.”

_If I can just get him away from Snoke. If I can just—_

But that was exactly what everyone was expecting of her, what they would use to rip him apart—rip them both apart. That was exactly what his family had failed to do.

As if he’d read her mind, he says quietly, “I’ve been down this road before, Rey. I have. I’ve watched people who say they know my heart slowly start thinking I’m a monster because I won’t listen to them. My good heart gets clouded by my own stupidity, or maybe it just was never good at all.” And suddenly his arms are around her, he’s crushing her to his chest. “I’m scared. I’m so scared of losing you.”

How many times has he told her this since they met, since they became a part of one another’s lives? It’s like she’s hearing it for the first time now—his desperation, his terror, that undercurrent of loneliness that had plagued him for so long as he’d wondered if anyone who was supposed to love him actually would—all of it seems so much rawer now than it had before. Like he’s spent the past few days trying to convince himself that it would be all right, but the deep-seeded fear has already grown its roots.

She swallows the lump out of her throat at that. She’s not his parents. She’s not her own. She doesn’t just give up on people.

“Have faith in me,” Rey whispers into his neck. “I’m not your parents, I’m not your uncle.”

“And what happens when you get tired of hoping I’ll change?” he asks her.

She looks at him and he looks at her and all she can think is how much she loves his eyes. They are so expressive, so thoughtful, so beautiful with their tints of her in them.

_What if he’s convincing himself he won’t change because he thinks he can’t? _she wonders. Because coming back from Snoke’s the other night, she’d _known_ he wasn’t happy. Change is scary—especially when the weight of the Presidency is riding on your shoulders, and that’s not even touching the fears he keeps expressing.

_I just don’t know him very well yet. _And yet she does. She _does_ know him, those feelings down in her gut.

And she’s going to trust her feelings, and make a gamble and pray it doesn’t break her heart—and his.

“I don’t know, but I’m good at waiting. I hate it, but I’m good at it.” It’s the truth. Because she will hate it.

He sighs.

“You’re just about the one thing I have faith in at this point,” he says. “I wish I had the same sort of faith in myself that I have in you.”

“What does that mean?” she asks him, but before he can answer, there’s a knock on the door to the office and Thanisson comes in.

“Mr. President, the Mortis Ambassador.”

“Right, send him in,” Ben says at once and he kisses Rey’s forehead for a long moment. “I’ll see you tonight,” he tells her and she knows she’s being dismissed.

-

It’s just as bad as Zoby had feared.

Or rather—the article is very complimentary of Rey. She can’t find a single line in it that doesn’t praise her. She’s stronger than she knows, suffering through every hardship Jakku has had to offer her; her eyes light up so beautifully when she talks about how much she loves the president; her face darkens when she thinks about the injustices of the world; she is not afraid to speak her mind about the ways in which the government has failed her and her countrymen.

While no one seems to be able to deny the compliments of the article, a veritable war breaks out on social media between those demanding that she apologize to Nordau and Taplons—both devoted public servants—and those who think she is speaking truth to power, and hasn’t been brainwashed by “that Fascist” who sits in the Hexagonal Office.

Senator Nordau makes the mistake of posting that Rey has “no idea what she’s talking about and never even finished high school” which only gets him hundreds of thousands of replies demanding to know whose fault that was if Jakku was so broken and its representatives never actually got anything done to help it.

The Glass Palace issues a statement that Rey was speaking for herself, and obviously that it appreciates the contributions that both Senators have made over the years, which does nothing but exacerbate the problem because that was not a rebuke enough for Nordau and Taplons, who in their outrage threaten to boycott the tax vote until Rey apologizes—which she refuses to do.

Zoby storms into her office suite more than once and tells Bazine that she’s ruining his news cycle and _how_ is he supposed to work on getting public support for the tax reforms that have left the House and are onto the Senate for markup if all anyone can talk about is how Rey “shaded” congress for not being interventionalist enough?

And Ben comes back very late one night after another dinner meeting with Snoke, looking both tired and angry, and when Rey asks him what’s wrong, he brushes her off and goes and takes the longest shower he’s taken since she’d arrived at the Glass Palace and then goes off to the Situation Room until Rey is too tired to keep her eyes open anymore.

As the Senate vote on the tax reform approaches, Rey finds herself sleeping worse and worse. Ben’s not in their bed nearly as much as usual—which isn’t to say he slept a _lot_ to begin with, but she misses him. She sleeps more easily after they’ve fucked, with her head on his chest, feeling warm and safe. In this bed without him, though, it’s far too easy for her deep-seeded fears to take root, that Ben won’t come back for her, that with this, she’s bringing to life all of the pain his youth caused him and that if he fails, he will not just be the failure of the family, but a failure to himself.

He doesn’t leave her little notes when she wakes up alone, but she tries not to read into that. He had stopped doing it except on special days, but everything feels like a special day as the bill comes out of committee and a date for floor debate is decided upon.

_Dear Mr. President, _Rey writes in her notebook, _I didn’t mean to make everything worse. I also know that I’m right and refuse to bend. I hate that that hurts you. I wish it didn’t. I wish I knew how to free you from this pain and fear._

_I wish I could free myself too._

_I wish it didn’t hurt that you’re busy all the time, and that I am scared you won’t come back to me, that I’ll have pushed you away and you’ll realize I’m not worth the pain. I have faith in you—such faith in you. But I don’t have faith in myself._

_You said that too._

_(If this is what it means to be soulmates, where we have echoing pains and fear the same thing from one another, I want my money back. I want to feel the part where you lift me up, make me feel strong and brave and like I believe in myself, not the part where I’m scared you’ll hurt me more than anyone ever has or could.)_

_(I know you feel this too.)_

She’s just closing her notebook when there’s a knock on the door of her office, and she feels a smile melt across her face when she sees Leia standing there in the door.

“Hello you,” Leia says. “I thought I’d swing by and take you out for lunch. And don’t worry, I already checked to make sure your schedule is free.”

Which is how they end up in a nice restaurant together halfway across Coruscant thirty minutes later, tucked away in a corner with Zorri standing guard over them both.

“Jyn had her way with you, didn’t she?” Leia asks as they look at the menu. “She does that. I had a sense this would happen when I heard she was writing the profile.”

“You know her?” Rey asks.

“More _of_ her. I don’t think we’ve ever really overlapped, though we keep circling around one another since we operate in very similar spheres,” Leia says. “I know she’s sharp as a tack and gets her way in whatever she does. She wasn’t going to profile you without figuring out what your politics were, no matter what your office or Ben’s tried to do to prevent that.”

“Well, that’s something I suppose,” Rey mumbles. “I just feel like I’ve made everything worse.”

“You haven’t,” Leia says calmly. “If anything, you’ve made it better for the things you care about. You punctured the momentum he needed to get this bill to succeed, and energized the Party of the Republic because they saw it as a green light from you to stop negotiating.”

“But doesn’t that make it worse for Ben?” Rey asks, and Leia takes her hand.

“Sweetheart,” she says firmly. “One of the hardest things will always be that—as much as I and you both love my son—he’s extremely wrong. And if it’s a matter of public service, and trying to make the right impact on the world, you need to do and say what’s right.”

“But—”

“And if Ben holds that much against you, that’s more my fault than yours. Mine and Luke’s.”

“Because you never agreed with him?”

“Because he felt as though we wouldn’t support him—and we wouldn’t. And we misinterpreted his needs until he thought that meant that we didn’t love him too.”

Rey frowns. “Doesn’t Luke not talk to him?”

Leia makes a face. “Luke took one tack, I took the other. For Luke, Ben’s politics became unbearable because he loved him; for me, _politics_ became unbearable because I love him. It’s why I stopped running. Yes, I was getting old, and tired, but I couldn’t keep going toe-to-toe with my own son. I couldn’t.”

She sighs.

“Anyway, you have a right to your opinion, as he does. There are times that Han and I don’t agree.”

“Yes, but it’s not going to impact your success in your legacy, is it?”

“Some of it has,” Leia says firmly. “Han’s career choices...meant that there were things I’d never be able to do. Not ever. But I won’t go into that,” she says when Rey looks at her curiously. “What I’m trying to say is—we forgive the people we love. That’s how it works. And there are some things that are wholly unforgiveable, and yet somehow we forgive those we love of that. Or we don’t, but we love them anyway. You did the right thing and I think deep down Ben knows that and he _also_ knows that it would be a profound act of violence you don’t deserve to try and change your mind.”

“And yet I’m trying to change his. And it reminds him of…” of _you_.

“And that’s your civic duty,” Leia says. “Whether or not he likes it, the buck stops with him, even when it comes from you, or me, or Luke. He’s not just Ben, he’s the President of the New Galactic Republic, and you’re allowed to speak your mind about political situations that are broken and _also_ know that he can love you. You can’t love him if you can’t also speak to what work he’s doing. Let’s say...let’s say he were an engineer. And he was building things that were broken, and you knew that. Would you tell him he needed to change and fix it?”

“Yes,” Rey says.

“Good. So keep doing that. Just because you’re soulmates doesn’t mean you have to say yes to everything the other says. You’re the one who can say _no and I still love you_, which Ben hasn’t heard in years because he doesn’t believe we actually love him.” Leia sighs, suddenly looking very tired. “And he needs to hear that. He needs to hear that so much. Because sometimes I wonder how much he just clings to all of this,” she gestures vaguely, which Rey gets means all of Ben’s—or Snoke’s—politics, “because he thinks we don’t love him and couldn’t love him, and not because he actually believes it.” It’s validating, hearing Leia echoing exactly what Rey had been thinking. “Because he’s too smart to think that Snoke’s _right_. Spite is a powerful motivator, as is pain, and Snoke will take advantage of both—and mercilessly.”

“I hate him,” Rey spits out angrily. “I hate him—every time he opens his mouth, I just want to rip him in two.”

“He’s like that,” Leia says in a clipped tone. “And he’s just waiting for you to snap so he can call you irrational, which makes him think he’s won. But he hasn’t won.”

“It feels like he has,” Rey says, remembering how angry Ben had been when he’d last come back from Snoke’s.

“I’ve been in this game a long time,” Leia says. “And I can tell when someone’s on the retreat. He probably can’t even recognize it, but he’s desperate right now. And his control is slipping.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because the Glass Palace didn’t rebuke you for saying two of his senators and one of his congresspeople were worthless. They released a toothless statement and then did nothing at all. He’ll call Ben weak for that, he’ll do all he can to try and regain control, but it’s clear that if Ben has to pick between you and Snoke, he’s picking you. And that—” Leia’s brown eyes are shining brightly at Rey across the table. “That is something he doesn’t know what to do with at all. Because he thought he’d wrested Ben from me and Luke only to be confronted with the one person Ben _won’t_ turn his back on.” She leans back, smirking delightedly. “And something tells me he knows he’ll have a hard time getting you to agree with _anything_ he says.”

The food comes, and they tuck in and Rey expects that the conversation is over then, but as she’s halfway through her salad, a man appears by the table and Zorri steps forward. “Excuse me,” she says firmly. “You’re going to need to take a step back.”

“He’s fine, he’s with me,” Leia says and that’s when Rey looks up and sees the man from the fundraiser—Luke Skywalker.

He sits down next to Leia, who doesn’t seem surprised to see him at all. “I’m glad you came,” is all she says, but Luke is looking at Rey, his blue eyes firm and cool. Rey feels herself stiffen the longer he looks at her

“I’m only here for a moment,” he says to his sister without looking away from Rey. “I’m between classes right now.”

“What do you want?” she asks.

“That interview,” he says, “You really said all of that? Erso wasn’t misquoting?”

“No,” she replies. “I said all that.”

Luke looks at Leia, who looks back at him. Then she rolls her eyes a little bit. “I keep telling you, no one’s ever really gone.”

“Not sure I believe he’s actually here yet,” Luke says. “But this will do for now.”

“What will do?” Rey asks, flaring.

“Everything we just talked about,” Leia says. “I don’t want Snoke to have control over my son. And if he did have full control, none of this would be happening if it were. And I needed Luke to know that too. Because you,” she turns to her brother, “have your head up your ass.”

Luke heaves a long-suffering sigh and shakes his head. “I do not.”

“You really do. Now go teach your class, we’ll talk later.”

And he’s gone, leaving Rey in his wake, unbelievably confused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (my beta: The idea of Toby working for republicans is killing me a little, though  
me: Lol same but I gotta)


	10. Chapter 10

“Yes, I think she should apologize,” Rey hears on the holo as she passes through the West Wing on her way up to the Residence. On the holovision, Senator Hux is staring into the camera, a microphone inches from his face. “I understand that she doesn’t know how things are done here, and that she’s doing her best to learn, but that was rude and uncalled for.”

“You’re rude and uncalled for,” Rey mutters as she gets into the elevator. It’s late in the afternoon, so she tries calling Dex’s before the dinner crowd comes in and she manages to catch Finn for a few minutes.

“One day I’ll have a mobilecom,” he says. “Especially now that I actually have a reason to have one.”

“They keep telling me to apologize,” Rey grumbles.

“The President?”

“Not him exactly, but everyone around him.”

“Don’t,” Finn says. “You said it and you were right. I swear to god, it’s all anyone can talk about here.”

“It’s all anyone can talk about here too,” Rey mumbles.

“Hey,” Finn interjects. “If they’re trying to make you feel bad about it, you tell them that Niima Outpost has never felt like the government stood for them until you said that. I mean it. I really do.”

“Yeah?” Rey asks. She doesn’t feel like that at all,

“Yeah. Dex printed out a copy of your article and it’s hanging on the wall of the diner. He keeps pointing at it and saying you used to work here.”

Rey smiles at that. Dex had always been so kind and so warm. “Tell Dex I miss him.”

“I will,” Finn says. “You’re making us proud. And you know Jakku—no one’s ever proud of anyone out here.”

“How’s Rose?”

“She’s good. The anniversary of Paige’s death is coming up so she’s been a bit sad.”

Rey’s stomach lurched. She has known for years when that was, but this is the only year it hadn’t crossed her mind. “Give her my love,” she says.

“I will. I always do. We miss you.”

“I miss you too,” and then because she had forgotten, “I need to remember to check with Ben about when you can visit. He said it would be a background check, but I don’t know what goes into that.”

“Yeah, and it might be hard to get some stuff out of Jakku government,” Finn sighs.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Rey says. “But I’ll remember to ask him when I next see him. It’s important to me—seeing you.”

“Hey, the fact that you even fucking com goes a long way,” he says and she hears his voice get a bit thick. “You could have just dropped us like the way the rest of the country drops—”

“I never would,” Rey says fiercely. “I don’t leave people behind.”

“No,” Finn agrees. “You don’t. You’re the best, you know that? Big damn hero. And I miss you so much.”

His words carry her late into the evening where, once again, she is alone and waiting for Ben. She eats her dinner wondering where he is—probably something about the vote—and thinking over what Leia had said over lunch. _Because he thought he’d wrested Ben from me and Luke only to be confronted with the one person Ben _won’t_ turn his back on._

Rey is curled up in bed, drawing in her notebook when she hears him come back. It’s near eleven o’clock and she puts the notebook aside and climbs out of bed to go to the door. She wants to kiss him, hold him. She has barely seen him in the past few days and she’s awake enough that she can actually spend some time with him if he’s not too tired.

But when the door opens, Ben’s face is hard, angry and she feels her smile falter on her face.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“You tell me,” he grunts, pushing past her and going towards his closet. He takes off one shoe, and then the other and hurls both of them into it in a way that makes Rey start. “Ben?” she asks slowly. She’s seen him angry before, but not like this, not angry enough that he rounds on her, his lips curled back in a growl. 

“How was lunch?” he snarls.

“What?” she asks.

“How was lunch?” he repeats. “You know, nice little family thing with my mother and uncle. How was it?”

“Ben, calm down,” she says, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible.

“Calm down?” he laughs. “Oh, I’ll show you calm.” He tugs his tie loose and it’s much less dramatic, watching him throw his tie into the closet after his shoes, because it sort of floats through the air as it goes and doesn’t land with heavy thunks, which makes it almost worse. He pushes past her and stands by the doorway, trembling, staring at it as though it’s locked.

Rey approaches him, rests a hand on the small of his back, murmurs his name, and he rounds on her again.

“Why?” he spits. “Why would you do that?”

“Ben, I don’t even know what I did.”

“You had lunch with _him_,” he says. “You know what he thinks of me. I _told_ you what he thinks of me. You know what I think of him. Why would you?”

“I didn’t,” Rey says. “He was there for all of five minutes.”

“Oh please,” Ben laughs humorlessly. “Oh please. Don’t lie to me like that.”

“I’m telling the truth,” she says. “Your mother invited me to lunch, and we talked and had a lovely time, and then he stopped by for five minutes before he had class. We didn’t even talk about anything, he was just there and—”

“And said hello. How lovely it was to meet you?”

“No, because he’d already been rude to me at the fundraiser and—”

“You met him at the fundraiser?” Ben’s fists are tight and his nostrils are flared and there’s spit flying from the corners of his mouth. He looks wild. He looks like he’s lost his mind.

“Ben,” she yells. “I’m _trying_ to tell you the truth but you’re scaring me.”

“Oh, I’m scaring you?” he says his voice low. “I’m _scaring_ you?” Somehow it’s more frightening than when he was shouting.

“Yes,” she replies. “Please Ben. Please don’t do this. Please calm down.”

“I don’t want to look at you right now,” he spits out after a long moment and Rey goes cold.

She doesn’t remember when she started crying. She doesn’t remember leaving the bedroom and going down the hall to the room that had been hers, and then hadn’t. She doesn’t remember going out onto the little balcony and staring down at the gardens below the way she had on her first night here. She just knows that she’s crying and staring at the flowers when she feels Ben’s arms around her and he’s shaking and crying too and whispering a litany of _sorry sorry sorry _and she’s too numb to hear the rest. 

Numb because she won’t let herself feel hurt. 

Her mind is protecting her. The way it had in the hospital all those years before when she’d known but hadn’t known how to believe that her parents had just left her behind.

Ben’s arms don’t make her feel warm right now. His lips at her neck, at the side of his face, his words—nothing.

He hadn’t wanted to listen to her. He hadn’t wanted to look at her.

_Garbage. They threw you away like garbage._

She chokes out another sob and that’s when Ben picks her up and carries her into the bedroom. He lies her down on the bed and pulls her to his chest and that’s really when she gets a look at his face. Even in the dark of the unlit room, she can tell that it’s red and splotchy. She can see that he’s crying and hurt and somewhere, beneath the numb, she doesn’t like that.

He’d been hurt when he’d been shouting at her. That’s why he’d been doing it.

It helps, but it also doesn’t.

“Why?” she asks him. “Why did you do that, Ben?”

“I’m sorry,” he groans.

“I was trying to tell you what happened and you wouldn’t—”

“I’m sorry,” and he’s kissing her but she’s pulling away and he looks gutted. Fresh tears leak from his eyes. “I’ll go.” His voice is flat.

She grabs the front of his shirt as he makes to get up off the bed.

“No,” she growls. “No, don’t go. _Answer_ me. Why did you do that?”

He swallows—no, not swallows. Gulps. He looks almost like a child who’s been caught and is now in trouble for something he doesn’t want to admit to because he knows he was wrong. 

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I—I just saw red. I don’t know. I lose my shit over my uncle sometimes. Most of the time, really. And I just...I—” He gulps again and tucks his head under her chin, nuzzling into the space between her neck and her breasts. His hands are so tight on her arms, clinging to her like he can’t bear to lose her. _When do you think you’ll stop thinking that I have a good heart? _ “I’m sorry. I’ve been putting you through so much and I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“How did you even know about the lunch?” she asks. Is Ben checking her schedule that meticulously? But even if he were, Luke hadn’t _been_ on her schedule. Hell, Leia hadn’t been on her schedule.

“I was having a strategy session with Snoke,” he mumbles into her chest. “About the tax reform vote. And he was saying things about how you were probably trying to bring me down, because why else would you be having lunch with my mother and uncle. And I didn’t believe him because I know you wouldn’t do that, but he had a picture from the restaurant and I just—”

She goes cold. 

“Was Snoke having me followed?” she asks.

He doesn’t respond right away. “I don’t know.” Because his forehead is pressed against her sternum, she can feel the way his brows come together in a frown.

“Luke was seriously only there for five minutes,” Rey says. “It was mostly me and your mother, which Snoke is going to have to deal with, because I want to get to know her because she’s your mother, Ben. And Luke just showed up and then left again.”

“What did he want?” Ben asks quietly. His voice is flat, empty sounding, like he’s used up all he has in the past however many minutes, like he’s little more than flesh and bone right now.

“He wanted to know if I’d actually said the thing in the profile, or if I was misquoted. Then he was vague about something and then he left. That was seriously it.”

“He didn’t like…” Ben pauses then says. “You met him at the fundraiser?”

“Yes,” she says. “I didn’t know it was him until after. He was rude and told me not to fall to the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes or something.” She rolls her eyes, weaving her fingers through his hair. “I happen to like your eyes a lot.”

“I like your eyes too,” he says. “I’m—I never want not to look at you. I don’t know why I said that.”

“Does he hurt so much? Luke?”

Ben swallows. “Your parents hurt, right?” he says. “That’s why—that’s why you shut down like that, right? Because your parents hurt and I was—I was making you feel like that?”

Rey blinks furiously. She’s already cried tonight, but apparently there are more tears to be had. 

“It’s not the same,” he says and he’s pulling away from her chest now. He’s pulling away, but his arms are still around her and he’s resting his forehead against hers and closing his eyes and from the way he’s breathing, she is sure that it’s the first time he’s breathed deeply in hours. “It’s not that. I know it’s not that. But sometimes it feels like he’d be happy if I was dead, you know? Like he thinks that I’m just some blight on the world. And I grew up thinking that I wasn’t supposed to be myself. I couldn’t make mom look bad, I couldn’t do what my dad does, I couldn’t...I just...I’m not allowed to be me, everywhere I turn. And now I’m the fucking President and far from feeling as though I finally get to be me, I feel even more tied down, and every which way I turn it’s…”

“I want you to be you,” Rey whispers. “I like you a lot.”

He swallows, and his lips are on hers again. “I like you a lot,” he tells her lips. “God, Rey. I care about you so much and I just—I didn’t want to lose you to Luke. And I was just—the way that Snoke—”

“I think you should never listen to a word he says, but I’ve already told you that,” Rey says. “Because you’re not going to lose me to Luke. Luke’s been _nothing_ but rude and abrasive to me and apart from earlier—” Ben’s arms tighten around her. She kisses him, lingering on his lips. “You’ve been so wonderful.”

Ben takes a few shuddering breaths and she gets the sense he’s trying to stop this next bout of tears. His arms don’t loosen, but his fingers do start, hesitatingly, to trace her back. “I need to have faith in you,” he mutters. “Like you said. I do. I do have faith in you. I just—I react too fast when Luke’s involved and I can’t—I won’t—” he’s stumbling over his words, clearly reeling and Rey waits. She waits for him to say whatever he’s going to say because she knows what he says, how he says it—it matters. “I’ll do better,” is what he manages. “I will. I don’t get to let my own hurt hurt you. I don’t. I won’t. I can do that for you.” 

He tilts his head up to look at her again and there’s desperation there, yes, but there’s also determination. There’s ferocity, and fire. 

“Thank you,” Rey says and she takes a deep, shaking breath. “Because I can’t do that again. I can’t. I love that you listen to me Ben, but you came in like...like...like I was guilty and wouldn’t even begin to listen.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. “That’s what they did to me for years,” he whispers. “They just assumed I—” and this time he can’t stop the tears, turning his head into the pillow, letting out a muffled, “Fuck. _Fuck.”_

“Hey,” Rey says, running her hands along his back as he cries.

“I’m nothing. I’m no one,” he sobs.

“No, you’re not,” she says, bending over and pressing her face into the crook of his neck so she can say it right to his ear. “You’re not. You never were, Ben.”

He’s taking a lot of long shuddering breaths. “Sometimes I felt like Snoke was the only person who made me feel that way. That I wasn’t no one.” Her hand tightens on the back of his shirt. “Then I met you.” He turns his face and nudges his nose against hers. “And I’m just...I’m just…” he shakes his head. 

“What?” she asks him gently.

“I’m realizing that he also makes me feel like I’m nothing, you know? And I thought he wasn’t like that, I thought he made me think I was more than that, but especially lately… I feel like you’re the only one who makes me feel like I’m not nothing. And then I made you go and feel like nothing.” 

“How about we figure out how to make you not feel like nothing,” she tells him. “You’re the fucking President of the New Galactic Republic. You’re definitely not nothing.”

“As if I didn’t worry the job ate my identity,” Ben mumbles.

“Then we’ll figure that out,” Rey says firmly. “You’re not alone.”

He nods. 

“And I’m not ever going to make you feel like nothing again, Rey. I promise. You’re—you’re everything to me.”

And she knows it’s true when he says it, down in her very core. It frightens her a little. She doesn’t know how to be someone’s everything.

She takes a deep, slow breath. She doesn’t know if now’s the right time. She feels like she should be continuing to affirm him, continuing to calm him, but she’s also afraid that if she does that, that’s all they’ll be and that one day, that’ll smother her.

So she says, “And there are going to be times when I tell you what you’re doing is stupid, or that I don’t think you should. But don’t think for a moment it’s out of a lack of love for you.”

He looks at her with eyes that are flecked with her. His breathing hitches for a moment. 

“As long as you love me, I can take that,” he says. Then his face melts into something almost light. “My parents did that. All the fucking time. When they weren’t a mess, I mean. Usually when they were a mess they walked on eggshells. But my mom used to call my dad an idiot, and he used to call her a princess. And they tried to make one another better. They tried to be better for the other person.” He takes perhaps the steadiest breath he’s taken since he came back from Snoke’s. “You make me want to be better, Rey. You do. I feel like I’m questioning everything I thought I knew for sure because you blazed like a fucking shooting star across the sky and now I can’t see the things I could see before. Just you. And I haven’t known how to tell you that because it frightens me—questioning everything I needed to be in order to…I don’t know. I don’t know.” He peeks at her, almost shy now. Then he lets out a sardonic huff. “Right now’s probably not the right time to tell you that. But I’m too blasted to really stop myself right now. But I think that’s better than—” his breath hitches, and a shade of nervousness washes over his face, “—than earlier. Maybe.”

She’s breathless. She’s truly breathless, and overwhelmed. She feels saturated, like her mind can’t take in anything else, like he’s given her more than she can possibly process in a month, much less a minute. But he’s here, and he seems to be aware of what happened, and seems regretful, and afraid of himself—so very afraid of himself. She doesn’t want him to be afraid of himself; she doesn’t want to be afraid of him. 

And she finds that she’s not—at least not right now. Earlier, maybe, but she also believes him when he says earlier won’t happen again, and she doesn’t think that’s just Magda another server at Dex’s who was always making excuses for whichever boyfriend she’d landed herself with who didn’t treat her right. She thinks this—this feels different than that. Because he’s overwhelmed too, maybe, or because she believes that blazing determination in his face far more than she’d believed his litany of _sorries_ when he’d found her on the balcony. That’s enough for now. 

And she’s said what she meant—she can’t do this again. She won’t. And she _really_ doesn’t want to be confronted with a possibility that it might because she knows down in her soul what she’ll do if it happens again, so she has to believe his determination.

She presses her forehead against his, her nose against his, and what breath she can manage mingles with his. She lets herself, finally, sink into the special warmth of him, lets it reach her heart again and lets her body, finally, relax against his. Her hands cup his cheek and her lips brush against his lightly first, then softly, then needily.

She feels weightless in his arms when he pulls her onto his chest so that she’s straddling his hips in a bed that had once been hers. She wonders vaguely if they should go back to his room, but he’s already sitting up underneath her and pulling her shirt up over her head and kissing her breasts and the thought leaves her mind. Nothing in the world matters except her and Ben. Nothing exists beyond them.

Everything about her is alive, alight as Ben’s hands trail up and down her back, as they toy with her hair, as his breath hitches and his cock twitches. 

She works at the buttons of his shirt as he kisses her chest sloppily. She shoves it off his shoulders, tugs his undershirt up over his head and then he’s rolling her over onto her back and she squeaks up at him because he’s so broad, and so heavy and his chest against hers is so—so—

It’s like she can feel her own heart beating in his chest.

It’s like she is breathing with his lungs as he hovers over her, nipping her neck now, nipping her stomach next, shoving her pajama pants down her legs and nipping at her thighs, the insides of her knees, her calfs. She holds onto what parts of him she can reach, and when his lips are back against hers, his belt buckle is jamming against her navel and she pushes his middle up so she can undo it and take it off.

Then her hands are down his pants, pulling him loose and rolling him onto his side so she can pump at his cock as his fingers find her clit and begin to roll it gently back and forth. He’s moaning her name into her neck again, sucking on it and she’s going to need so much makeup to cover this tomorrow, but it’s ok because it’s Ben. Just Ben and his fingers and his lips and his heart and his eyes—all hers. Hers forever, hers for now, for this moment when she doesn’t want to think about anything except how good she feels, that she _can_ feel good at all.

Now, it is her turn to kiss her way across his chest, to suck on each little freckle she finds. Now it her turn to drag his pants down his legs and kiss at his thighs, at his knees, at his ankles. Now it is her turn to kiss her way back up and nuzzle lightly against the exact spot where his balls meet his shaft and Ben groans, and she feels his dick twitching against her lips.

She opens her mouth and licks her way along it, right to the tip before sucking it into her mouth and Ben, sputters out a, “Fuck, Rey,” as she rolls her tongue across the tip as though licking a lollipop. Ben’s hands are in her hair, twitching more than caressing, and when Rey looks up at him, his face looks so pristine. Gone is the anger, gone is the pain. There’s just joy there. Joy and release.

He’s dribbling a little bit against her tongue, and he tastes so right. Tangy, and sharp, and musky, and human. She cups his balls, rolling them between her fingers and his breathing gets louder up the bed. He’s moaning with every breath, a steady hum of Ben filling the air as his hips start to buck up into her mouth, as his dick twitches more and more inside of her. 

Then his fingers tighten in her hair and he’s dragging her mouth away from him and she watches him bob, wet and shiny against his abdomen as his hands move to her shoulders and he pulls her up the bed and onto her side. His kiss is messy—all tongue and teeth and more panted groans as he fumbles between them and slides his cock into her, hitching her leg up over his hip and pulling her close. And then the sounds change.

His breaths are still moans, but now there are her gasps filling the dark room as well. Now there’s the salacious slap of his thighs against hers, murmured words of love that fall from each of their lips like fate, like diamonds.

She doesn’t really know when the orgasm starts, just that it does. It builds inside her with each contraction, as she tries, desperately, to keep her lips against his she gasps for breath, as she melts, as she goes still.

She feels so warm against his chest, his cock buried deep inside her. He’d gone still while she’d come and she buries her face against his neck and sucks on it. Let him have more hickies under his collar tomorrow. Let her be in the room with him even when she can’t be. 

When he does start moving again, it’s not long before he’s coming too, before he’s melting onto her, before he’s burying his face in her hair and just breathing.

She doesn’t know exactly when he tugs one of the blankets from the foot of the bed up to cover them. She’s not sure she needs it.

She’ll be warm if he’s there. She knows she will.

-

She’s a bit disoriented when she wakes.

She is in her old room, and naked, and the bed is very rumpled. The room is bright from daylight because the curtains had not been closed overnight. It takes her a long moment to remember everything from the night before. 

She swallows and looks around. There’s no sign of Ben apart from the rumpling of the bed. He and his clothes are long gone, and there’s no little card telling her he loves her, that he’s sorry, that he meant what he’d said last night when he’d been crying in this bed. But she does find her pajama shirt and pants folded right where she knows that Ben had slept. A lump lodges in her throat. 

She puts them on and goes back to the bedroom to shower and dress. She feels calm. Almost clarified, somehow. Awake. 

But also nervous.

For all their kisses and tears and words, now that the sun has risen, something frightens her still about the night before. It doesn’t feel set in stone. He’d been too emotional, she’d been too numb—it doesn’t feel...settled, doesn’t feel solid.

And of course, the tax vote is today, so he’ll probably be busy until god knows what time, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up back at Snoke’s again tonight. The thought does _not_ please her at all.

She does her best to cover up the fresh round of hickies on her neck before going down to the office, where, much to her surprise, she finds Mitaka waiting for her.

“Everything ok?”

“I am coming,” Mitaka says deliberately, “not on the President’s orders. But would you please apologize to Nordau and Taplons? They are threatening to abstain from the tax reform vote this afternoon over this and if they do, the reform will definitely pass. The whip count is tight enough as it is.”

“I will not,” Rey says. 

“I know that it’s—”

“No, you know nothing,” Rey says firmly. “Have you ever spoken to anyone in Jakku?”

“I have not,” Mitaka says carefully.

“Well, I do. Still. So no, I’m not apologizing. Even if Ben asked me to, I wouldn’t. What I said was neither wrong nor rude—they’re just bullies who like getting their way and are too used to bullying the people of Jakku into getting what they want and you know what? I don’t like bullies. Is that everything?”

“I want you to know that this—”

“Is going to affect other things. Yes, I know,” Rey says.

“Not just that,” he says, “though it will. We have a health care debate coming up and—”

“Good, because that’s fucking broken,” Rey grumbles.

“You can’t just do things like this and not take directives from the President’s Office. If it keeps happening, it’ll make it seem like he can’t make his own decisions, or he’s just letting you do what you want and it doesn’t matter what happens to the rest of the country. That’s how he loses reelection—because people think he’s being led around by his—”

“Better me than Snoke,” Rey interrupts firmly, not bothering to keep the acid out of her mouth. She doesn’t need Mitaka to be echoing, however unintentionally, Snoke’s comment about how Ben’s too busy being up her skirt. _Especially_ after last night. “He’s a grown man, and he’s the President. It won’t always be like this but it is like this now and I’m right and he knows it.”

“Yes but people here don’t forget. They have long memories, and—”

“And so do I,” Rey replies. “Nordau and Taplons can apologize to me for all the things they could have done to help a little orphan living in Jakku. How long’s Nordau been in the Senate? Twenty years?”

Mitaka looks uncomfortable. 

“I wonder if people here forget that real people have to live with their choices. They should have to live with them too.”

Twenty minutes later, Tenel comes in. “You’re wanted in the Hexagonal Office,” she says.

Rey takes a deep breath. The vote starts in an hour. Surely Ben’s got other things to do right now? But she gets to her feet and makes her way through the West Wing. 

“He’s waiting for you,” Thanisson says. “You can go on in.”

Ben’s alone in the office, sitting behind the wide desk. He’s reading a briefing and looks up the moment that the door opens, getting to his feet as Rey closes the door behind herself. 

“Thanks for coming,” he tells her, moving to stand in front of his desk. It’s as though he’s unsure whether he wants to sit or stand, as though he’s waiting for her to decide.

“What’s up?”

“I wanted to talk about last night,” he says carefully and Rey pauses mid-step. 

That was not what she’d been expecting at all.

“What about it?”

He takes a deep breath. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. 

“I love you, Rey,” he tells her and her lips part in surprise, her eyes prickling, her heart twisting. “I love you, and—and we both sort of said that last night, but it was so drowning in everything else that I wanted to make sure it didn’t get lost. And no matter what Snoke, or anyone else thinks—I don’t think you’re trying to manipulate me. I think you’re trying to...I don’t know. Love me too, I guess.”

His gaze ducks down to her lips for half a heartbeat, and now it’s her turn to reach up and press a hand to his cheek, to bring his face down to hers and rest his forehead against hers.

“I love you,” she whispers to him because that’s all her throat can manage right now. “I really do. And there’s a lot that’s confusing and a lot that hurts, but that, at least, I’m positive of.”

“Ok,” he says sounding relieved and he drops his lips down to hers, clearly going for a deeper kiss than she wanted because his breath catches when she pulls away.

“There was something I wanted to talk to you about too,” she says, steeling herself.

“What is it?” he asks, his face a little tense as his eyes dart back and forth between each of hers.

“Last night was a lot,” she says carefully, and she watches as his eyes sort of go dull. Her heart lurches in her chest. “And Ben, I’m scared—am I the only person who makes you feel like you’re not horrible?”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. He stares at her as though she’d kicked him in the chest. He doesn’t say anything for a long while. He swallows twice, he licks his lips and he just stares at her.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Yeah, sort of.”

Rey takes a deep breath. She’d been afraid of that. She hops up onto the desk and sits, patting the wood next to her. Ben leans against it but doesn’t sit. She takes his hand.

“Do you think you’re horrible?” she asks him. This question is easier to ask somehow. 

“Sometimes,” he mutters. He isn’t looking at her now, and she reaches for his hand.

“You’re not horrible, you know,” she tells him. His eyes are still dull and unfocused. “And I meant what I said last night—how do we make you feel like you’re not nothing? Because I know that feeling and it’s terrible, and it’s so hard to let go of the parts of life that make you feel like that. I’m terrible at it it.” She thinks of Finn, and Rose, who had been the first people since Maz to make her feel like she was worth the air she breathed, thinks of Dex who made sure she ate—and Ben, who looks at her like she’s the moon sometimes. Ben has done so much to make her feel like she isn’t nothing. But he’s not _all_ she has, or all she’s ever had. And if he’s started noticing that Snoke makes him feel like nothing too…

She continues, slowly, carefully, hoping what she says won’t set him off, so afraid that it will after the night before, that his determination will have been a lie that he, too, had believed. “But I can’t be the only source of that validation, Ben. I can’t. It’ll smother me and there won’t be anything left and I already feel like I can’t say things to you sometimes.”

His face changes very quickly at that. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Little things. I’ve been putting them in my notebook, writing you letters. Usually about things I can’t change but—but that’s not the point. The point is—I don’t want to be afraid to say things to you, or that you’ll think I’m—”

“I wasn’t trying to silence you,” he says at once.

“Let me finish,” she huffs and he goes quiet as she continues,

“That you’ll think I don’t love you, or don’t want the best for you just because I want the best for myself. The last thing I want is that. But I—”

“I have a thick skin, you can say whatever,” Ben says.

“That,” Rey says trying and failing to hold in an endearing laugh, “is such a lie, Ben Solo.”

He blinks at her, surprised. “It’s—”

“No, it’s a lie. You feel everything very deeply and you try and hold it together but you do not have anything resembling a thick skin. I would know. _I_ have a thick skin.”

His face turns into a wry smile. “Oh yeah, sure you do.”

“I’m getting used to it here,” she says. “All this doesn’t count. When I’m fully settled you wait. I—”

“Just want to be loved,” he tells her matter-of-factly, pushing himself away from the desk and standing in front of her. “Everything you do, you’re just _longing_ for someone to appreciate you, to prove that you are worth something more than your parents abandoned you for. I would know. I’m similar.”

“So you’re admitting you don’t have a thick skin is what I’m hearing,” Rey laughs, taking both of her hands and his lips are inches from hers. 

“I love your laugh,” he says, and his eyes twinkle for one shining second before his joy recedes a bit. He sighs. “It’s not your job to make me feel...like everything in life is perfect. Just...just be there with me, you know? I don’t want you to be afraid of how I’ll react. Last night—last night was—I’m not going to let it happen again. I’m not. I’m better than that—I can be better than that. I don’t want to hurt you, or frighten you, or drive you away. I don’t want to smother you.”

“I don’t want to smother you,” she replies and his face does a thing and suddenly Rey’s got an image in her mind that has her suddenly feeling hot and cold, her nipples getting stiff in her shirt and _completely_ undercuts the sincerity of the moment before. “_Ben_,” she hisses, and he goes in for the kill, leaning forward, kissing the skin just under her ear.

“I want you to sit on my face someday,” he says. “I want you to be all I can see or taste or think.”

“Ben, we’re in the _Hexagonal Office_. You can’t just _say things_ like that.”

“I am pretty sure I can do what I want in here,” he says and she remembers that first day, when they’d been in the rose garden together and he’d cut a flower for her. _Pretty sure no one’s going to get me into trouble. _He looks almost boyish as he gives her a wicked grin. “Besides, I told them not to interrupt us under any circumstances.”

Rey raises her eyebrows and he raises his right back and his lips are on her throat again, his hands at her hips. 

“Ben,” she protests again as his fingers climb her thigh under her skirt.

“I don’t need to watch the fucking vote. That’s what I have staff for,” he tells her. His fingers are slipping under her underwear and stroking at her and she moans and widens her hips and that’s all he needed. 

The skirt is a pencil skirt, extremely not designed for leg spreading. But as Ben tugs her underpants down her legs, she shimmies it up as much as she can. Ben takes off his jacket, loosens his tie and undoes the top button. Then he sinks to his knees and his mouth is on her and Rey gasps as he licks his way up and down, slowly, reverently, teasing her clit as much as he can.

Pleasure ripples through her. She feels herself bloom like one of the roses in that garden under her tongue and as she leans back on her elbows, lets her eyes wander around the room—fuck, the _President_ is really giving her head in the Hexagonal Office—she notices that there are vases full of roses here too, just like there had been the first night that they’d been together in his bedroom. 

She bites her lower lip, trying to keep a whimper inside herself as Ben slips a finger into her and curls it up and begins to stroke inside her in time with his tongue. He sucks her clit between his lips. Rey’s shoes—fancy heels that don’t tie themselves to her feet—fall from her feet as she curls her toes the sound of them thunking to the ground makes her just—she—god it feels so good. She leans back further, resting herself fully on the desk now. She groans when Ben nudges her hips further apart, when he takes first one foot and then the other and rests them on his shoulder and her hips drop wide, offering herself to him, spreading herself for him as her heart races faster and faster and faster.

She does her best to muffle her cries when she comes, her body arching off the desk, her blood racing both hot and cold from her cunt to her heart and back again. She lets herself go limp, lets her legs drop off his shoulders as every part of her tingles and the orgasm just—it just—

It takes what it wants from her, leaves her spent and satiated and sprawled across his desk. She can feel herself still dripping a bit and Ben keeps licking lightly as though he’s drinking the finest nectar. 

Slowly, he leans away. He finds her shoes and puts first one, then the other on her feet, kissing the inside of each of her ankles. 

“God you’re a sight,” he whispers. “I’m never getting work done in here ever again.”

“Good,” she says. “You sound happy about that plan.” He kisses the inside of her thigh and gets to his feet and she sees just how much the front of his slacks are tenting.

“We can’t have that, Mr. President,” she tells him and she swears to god she can see his dick twitch. 

He groans.

“Never getting work done in here ever again.” He pulls her forward and kisses her and she hears the sound of his belt coming loose, his fly unzipping. She slides off the desk, doing her best to balance on shaky legs as she grabs hold of his dick and pulls it lightly. 

When she kisses him, he tastes like her, and she grins into his lips. “How do you want me?” she asks him and he freezes for a moment, considering. 

And then he’s turning her around, one hand cupping her breast through her shirt and rubbing her still sensitive clit with the other. Then he’s bending her forward over the desk, his lips at the back of her neck and he’s sliding into her and she sighs and wiggles her hips against his. 

And there it is again, the sound of his thighs against hers as he presses her into the desk. He grunts quietly into her ear, his fingers tracing her lips and she opens her mouth to lick at them. They taste like her too. 

“I don’t deserve you,” he whispers to her. “I don’t.”

“You do,” she replies forcefully. “God, Ben, you—”

She arches her back under him, pressing her ass up towards his groin and she shifts her legs. They’d been spread wide a moment ago, but she brings them closer together and—

“Fuck,” he hisses in her ear. “Fuck—god you’re tight. Rey—I—”

And she turns her head to face his, tilts it as far back towards him as it’ll go and captures his lips as he fucks her. And god—he fucks her.

He’s going so fast, his knuckles are white on the desk next to her. She barely has time to feel how full she is of him before he’s gone, but before she can feel bereft, he’s back. The angle is delicious as well, the crown of his cock hitting that same spot that he’d been fingering while he’d been licking her and this time—this time when she feels the pleasure pooling in the pit of her stomach, she’s lightly biting his arm to muffle the cry as everything, everything, everything fills her whole body flexes beneath him as he bites into her shoulder and comes too.

His bite turns into kisses. Kisses along her neck, along her ear. “I love you,” he whispers there, and nips at her earlobe.

“Ben,” she whimpers as he starts to pull himself out. He reaches across his desk and grabs some tissues, cleaning himself from her before picking up one leg and then the other and helping her back into her underwear.

“You ok?” he laughs when she doesn’t move.

“You can’t just do that to me in the middle of the day.”

He leans back over her and she feels his breath, hot against her ear. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “I’m not going to be able to walk.”

He grabs her hips. “Want to sit on my lap for the rest of the day?”

“_Ben_.”

He’s pulling her skirt down her legs too and gently eases her back to standing. She leans against his chest. 

“I need a nap,” she says.

“Me too,” he glances down at his watch. “But I’ve been keeping Hux waiting, so.”

Rey stiffens. “Is he just out there?”

“He’s in the Map Room, but I had more important things to take care of,” he says and she turns around and looks up at him, bewildered. “There is literally nothing he can say right now that I want to hear, but I _do_ want to hear every word that comes out of your mouth. I’m prioritizing correctly, I think.” He kisses the tip of her nose, his eyes so soft. 

Rey straightens his tie, and helps him into his jacket again. His cheeks are still a little flushed from the activity, his eyes a little brighter than usual. “There’s a strong chance he’ll know you were fucking.”

“I can safely say I do not give a shit,” Ben tells her. “You…” he gives her a once over. “There’s not a shot in hell anyone’s going to look at you and think you weren’t just bent over a desk.”

And he gives her such a boyish grin that she’s not sure she can even be angry with him as they leave the Hexagonal Office together.

-

The Senate passes the tax reform bill and it comes to Ben’s desk for signature the next day. 

He signs it without delay.

“Why?” Rey asks him that night when they’re in bed. He had been invited to Snoke’s for the fourth night in a row and had forgone the invitation, choosing instead to fuck Rey into the mattress for the third time in less than twenty four hours. And while she’s still the farthest thing from a political expert, she knows enough from the way people are talking about it that this bill isn’t one that perfectly lines up with Ben’s political vision. Her head is now pillowed on his chest, and he’s rolling strands of her hair through his fingers.

“Why what?”

“Did you sign so quickly? Surely there would have been something else you could have done to get it more like what you wanted.”

He shrugs. “What I wanted most was for it to be over and done with,” he says. “So that’s what I got. On to the next problem from here.”


	11. Chapter 11

It isn’t quite that easy.

For the next week, no matter how hard Ben tries, the news cycle remains focused on the tax bill. The First Order blames Rey. If she’d just apologized, if she’d just kept her damn mouth shut, then they could have put pressure on the senators from Manaan and they wouldn’t have voted for the bill in the end.

The Party of the Republic cheers Rey. She had given them the clear signaling they’d needed—or wanted to see, at least—that the negotiations that the First Order wanted to revisit were not what the Glass Palace wanted.

“And of course,” the Senate Majority Leader said in an interview on the Capitol steps, “We will work closely with the President to focus on what he wishes to focus on next, but for the time being, we intend to listen to the will of the people and revisit health mandates in this country.”

Rey gets three more interview requests from different magazines, all of which Zoby completely refuses to let her team authorize. “Next she’ll start war with Ord Mantell or something. Will Corellia even still be part of the union? No.”

Rey can’t be bothered by that though. It’s hard to, when Ben spends most of his evenings with her. They go to a symphony performance by the visiting Kamino State Orchestra with the Kaminoan Ambassador, they attend a charity function that Bazine found that focused, once again, on providing community support for children in foster care, they go to a baseball game because the Coruscant team had made the playoffs.

Rey had never seen a baseball game before. Finn had followed some of it, but he’d never been intensely into it. She spends the entire evening in an oversized sweatshirt and a baseball cap that Ben had secured on her head, drinking cheap beer from a plastic cup and letting Ben explain how the game worked. She doesn’t really pay attention. She just likes the sound of his voice, the way he smiles, the way, after a while, she gets chilly and snuggles up next to him. 

They end up on the stadium’s kiss camera during the seventh inning stretched, his arm around her shoulder, her head on his. The stadium’s speaker system plays the national anthem and Ben laughs and his ears go red but he does kiss her to the raucous whistling and cheers of the entire stadium. His baseball cap knocks hers off and people laugh and they both reach out to grab it and the camera is still on them when he pulls her into his arms.

“I’m happy,” she whispers to him when the game starts up again. “I’m really happy.”

And the look he gives her could melt her heart if it weren’t already melted.

-

Two weeks after Ben signed the tax reform bill, things get worse.

Rey comes back from an event that Ben hadn’t been able to join her on to find him sitting in the bedroom, extremely drunk, his gaze glassy as he looks up at her.

“Hellllo,” he slurs at her. “Djou have a nice time?”

He still has a tumbler of whiskey in his hand and Rey pauses in the doorway, taking off her heels and frowning.

“Everything all right?”

“Very,” he says and he holds out a hand to her. “C’mererer. I missed you.”

But when he tries to kiss her, his breath is stale from drink. He spends a good fifteen minutes trying to get himself hard but he can’t. Then he starts crying and she helps him to the shower, stripping him out of his clothing and setting him under some cool water while he sits on the floor of the stall, his head leaning against the tile.

“I’m not weak, am I?” he asks her through the water.

“What?” she asks him sharply.

“Weak. I’m not—I’m not weak? You don’t think I’m weak, do you?”

“Don’t be silly, you’re one of the strongest people I know,” she tells him.

It’s not until the next day that she learns what it was that had driven Ben to drink so much.

“The OpEd was released in the Coruscant Daily Mirror yesterday evening,” the newscaster is saying as Rey walks through the West Wing towards her suite of offices, and she pauses to stop and listen when she sees a picture of Ben, “penned by President Solo’s uncle and detailing the ways in which the Solo Presidency is one of the weakest in the past hundred years. Luke Skywalker, a professor of political philosophy who is guest lecturing at Coruscant University from Praxeum College this year, refused to comment on what inspired him to write the article, which one could call damning of his nephew.” There news presentation cuts to a video of Luke, looking very tired and saying, “It’s all in the article. I don’t have anything else to say.”

And Rey feels a deep sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’s supposed to be meeting with Bazine and Tenel this morning. They were going to discuss planning a dinner party that she would host completely under her own steam, and who she’d invite, and why. But that seems silly right now.

She hurries over to the Hexagonal Office but Artoo cuts her off when she approaches. “He’s in the Situation Room,” she says.

Rey frowns. “Any sense of when he’ll be back?”

“He just went down.”

“Please tell my office when he’s back. I want to talk to him.”

Artoo gives her a look. “He’s been in a bad shape today.”

“Yes,” Rey says. “He was last night too.”

The older man nods, knowing that he and Rey understand one another.

Rey is unfocused in her meeting, which seems positively stupid right now. Everything about this seems superfluous. It’s like they’re just trying to find things to fill her time and what she really wants to do is hold Ben’s hand and tell him not to listen to a word his uncle thinks about him.

“Are we boring you?” Bazine asks her.

“Sorry,” Rey mumbles. “I’m just distracted.”

“What’s distracting you?”

“This article that came out last night,” she says. “The one Luke—” Bazine rolls her eyes and Rey glares at her. “What was that for?” she demands hotly. “It’s upsetting—”

“And it shouldn’t distract you from your work. It shouldn’t distract _him_ from his, or you from yours. You have a job to do. Do it. Your life doesn’t revolve around the President’s mood.”

Rey opens her mouth to retort, then closes it again. Then opens it. Then glares down at the notebook in front of her where she’d been doodling for the past fifteen minutes rather than take notes.

She’s right. She’s very right. Except—

“What even is the point of all this?” Rey asks, interrupting Tenel.

“The point of what?”

“A dinner party? Why would I want to host a dinner party? Because it’ll make me look good?”

“Yes,” Bazine says simply, sounding tired.

“If I want to do things, I want to—”

“Actually do things?” Bazine sounds tired. “I thought you’d finally understood it. Things like dinner parties, and fundraisers, and charity events—they make it easier to do the things you want to do because you make people like you. People are more likely to help you if they like you, if they think you hold power. That’s what politics _is_.”

“And I hate it,” Rey growls. She feels like a caged animal right now. 

“You hate it because you don’t know what you’re doing,” Tenel says.

“I’m _trying_,” Rey snaps at her.

“That’s not what I meant,” Tenel says calmly. She takes a sip of water and gives Rey a look. “Bazine and I—we’ve been giving you things to do. You have been doing them. You’ve been learning. You’ve been growing. But we work for you, not the other way around. What sort of things do you want to do, ma’am? What do you care about? What do you want your focus to be? Because sure, you can sit here and keep planning dinner parties, but if you don’t use them _for_ something, of course you’re going to feel stuck.”

Rey looks at her.

“And what if what I want stands at odds with what Ben wants?”

“Then we’re a team and we find a solution. What do you want?”

Rey swallows.

“I want to help kids,” she says. “I want to help kids who feel lost and alone and like they don’t matter. I want to fix the fucking broken foster system, and—and—” She fumbles. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what I want.” She feels stupid for having said anything at all.

“That,” Bazine says firmly, “sounds like a pretty clear idea to me.”

Rey looks up at her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“But what if I’m just saying that because that’s what you’ve been giving me to do until now?”

“Maybe we’ve been giving it to you because we had a good educated guess that you’d want it,” Tenel says, not unkindly.

“So then isn’t that my direction?”

“If you make it your direction, then yes. But _you_ have to decide that it’s what you want. If you’d come and said you wanted to fix the nation’s recycling programs, we’d have changed courses. But _you_ get to decide.”

Rey looks at them both.

“What if I change my mind in six months?” she asks. 

“Then you change your mind in six months,” Bazine shrugs. “You have the extreme luxury of not being held to a campaign promise in doing what you want to do. No one else in the government can get away with that, but you can. You decide you want to revamp what clean water means, then that’s where we turn ourselves. But for now, if you say you want to help kids in the system, then we help kids in the system.”

“_How_?” And she knows the answer before Bazine even replies and she just lets out a long, exasperated moan in the back of her throat. “By paying attention to this.”

“Yes,” Bazine says. “You aren’t an elected official, or a presidential appointee. So we get you involved with philanthropy, we make congresspeople—probably on the left at this point you’ve more than pissed off the right—want to get your favor. Which means you—”

Rey puts her head on the table. “It feels like—I don’t know. I hate waiting. I _hate_ it.”

“Then don’t think of it as waiting. Think of it as careful work you need to do to set the stage, and if you do it properly, you’ll be able to help so many people.”

Rey swallows.

“I just…” she mutters, “It doesn’t actually feel like helping them. I know it is. I _know_ it is. The things that I could do from here can have lasting reach but when I was a kid, I just wanted someone to be there for me. And Maz was, but I lost Maz.”

“We could look into you doing some sort of volunteer work,” Tenel says slowly and Bazine shoots her a look.

“The praetorian guard isn’t going to like that.”

“I said look into it. We won’t do anything that they don’t feel they can guard her during. But I don’t think that doesn’t mean we can’t find some sort of something. If you want to work with the kids themselves as well as do all this, I don’t see why we can’t make that happen.”

Rey’s throat tightens. “Yeah?” she asks.

Bazine considers, and Rey watches as she is going through all the possible ways that this could go right or go wrong. Then she sighs. “You can’t have that hopeful puppy dog expression like that. It’s not fair.”

Rey grins. “You _do_ have a heart.”

“I don’t. Don’t say things like that,” Bazine protests dryly. “We can work with this,” she says. “We’ll have options for you by the end of the week.”

And Rey’s smile only widens. The prospect of spending time with children like her is so much less daunting than the prospect of seating arrangements for this dinner.

Twenty minutes later, the com rings an Bazine picks it up. “Thank you,” she says, hanging up and turning to Rey. “The President’s back from the Sit Room.”

Rey’s on her feet immediately and heading to the Hexagonal Office once again. To her surprise, she runs into Ben in the hallway halfway there. There are dark circles under his eyes and, though he is clean-shaven, he looks as though the light in the hallway is too bright.

“How are you feeling?” she asks him, reaching up and tracing the circle under his eye.

“Hungover,” he grunts. 

“Where are you walking?” she asks.

“I was coming to find you. Artoo said you stopped by. And I need to not be in that office right now.”

So she leads him back to hers, closing the door behind him.

He looks around the room. “This is a nice setup,” he says.

“Thank Bazine. I had nothing to do with it,” she replies, leading him over to one of the sofas. He sits down next to her, and rests his head on her shoulder.

“I’m guessing you figured it out.”

“Yes,” Rey says. “And he’s—”

“Not _wrong_. That’s what hurt the most. Mine is a weak—”

“Don’t say it—”

“Presidency. I can’t keep my party in order, the Party of the Republic just keeps walking all over everything I want to get done, and I have _no_ negotiation power on either side right now because all of them think…” he sighs. “That you have more of a conscience than I do. Or that you’re dragging me around by my dick. Snoke has really been spreading that one.”

“More reasons—”

“He’s getting on my nerves,” Ben says. “A lot. I don’t like the way he talks about you, and every time I tell him that, he says you’re making me weak. And as I’ve said, right now I think you’re one of the few people who makes me feel strong.” He nudges his nose against her cheek. “But that doesn’t negate the fact my presidency is weak. So weak. I wasn’t supposed to win the election, it makes no sense that I did. Congress doesn’t support me or work with me so my hands are tied on all the promises I made and I just…”

“What is strength?” Rey asks him. “What does a strong presidency even mean?”

“You’ll get different answers out of everyone,” Ben snorts. “But I think everyone agrees that it’s a matter of getting done what you say you’re going to get done and not letting Congress walk all over you.”

“Isn’t Congress supposed to be the one that does the legislating and the President is the one that enacts the legislation?” Rey asks slowly. “Like, wasn’t that how it was framed?”

“Three hundred years ago, sure,” Ben says. “That’s the spirit of it, but that’s not how it’s developed over time. The Presidency also was supposed to focus mostly on international matters and the Vice President was supposed to work with congress on domestic matters, but _that_ didn’t end up being how anyone did anything because the Vice President is a useless role and it ended up being that the President did all of it. I’d say eighty percent of my job is spent in the Situation Room, dealing with other countries, but the things that everyone cares most about are the domestic issues—which are important.” 

“And that’s not what you signed up for?”

“It is,” he says. “The international policy piece is one of the few things I feel settled on, actually. Where I feel like I have everyone’s support. It’s domestic shit that…” He sighs. “I feel like everyone’s waiting for me to just...I don’t know.” He looks at her. “Most of the articles in the past few weeks have been hinting that I’m going to do a one-eighty on most of the things I campaigned on because of you.”

“Would you?” she asks.

“_No_,” he says. “Because believe it or not, I actually do sort of believe in the things I said I cared about. The issue I’m hitting…” He reaches a hand up to brush some of his hair out of his face. “is that I’m not sure the way people have been thinking about them, the way they’re committed to legislating about them them as are the right ones. Like—the market, right? The engine of the Galactic Economy. People act as though it’s a binary—there’s either no regulation or only regulation. Why _is _that? And the answer is, because politicians have to do what they say they’re going to do or they don’t get reelected, and the language around it is increasingly polarizing. It’s not about working together. It’s about beating the other party. Snoke’s definitely had his hand in that.” And when he looks at her next, it’s clear it’s with the softest eyes he can manage through his hangover. “And _that_’s where I see your influence. Not that I agree with you, but that you make me want to find a medium, find a compromise. Because I think what you want is understandable but misguided, and you think what I want is completely wrong.” He snorts. “And whatever—that’s fine. We don’t actually talk about _that_ much. But what we’ve been talking about…” his voice trails away and he brushes a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “Finding a happy medium. Why is it considered weakness to find a balance? To find something you _can_ agree on and see where it takes you? Snoke made it sound for _years_ like that wasn’t even a remotely acceptable option, but it makes no fucking sense not to work with the people you disagree with if maybe you can both change your minds to something you can agree to. That’s what I’ve been chewing on since the tax vote. That’s why I signed it fast. Because _that_—that’s just…I don’t know.”

Rey kisses him, pulling her arms around him and holding him close. She doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t have to work with the people he has to work with, is only beginning to understand the intricacies of this arena. But she _does_ like the idea of how angry Snoke would if he knew that was where Ben’s mind was these days. And deep down, beneath it all, that flaring pride that just by waiting and hoping that he’d have the courage to change, he was getting there on his own.

They sit there quietly for a long time, her arms still around his neck, his head leaning on her shoulder. His hand trails up and down her leg.

“It’s funny,” he says after a while. “People always tell you how it’s night and day—finding your soulmate. And it is. But I never thought I’d...just—I never thought that I would feel this differently about the world around me.”

“You and me both,” Rey mutters. And he looks at her and his lips find the pulse point of her throat. 

“This job is insane,” he says. “What I want right now is to take a few weeks, think about what I can and should do, figure my shit out—but it doesn’t work like that. It’s eating me alive.” He sighs. “Is the presidency weak because it makes the president weak, or is the presidency weak because the president is already weak?”

“Hey,” Rey says gently. “You’re not weak.”

“I’m not strong.”

“You are,” she says. “Far more than you give yourself credit for.”

“Funny, I could say the same of you.” His voice is a bit wry, and when Rey looks down at him, his eyes are closed and there’s a look almost of peace on his face. “_Fuck_ Luke. Just fuck him. He doesn’t get to say that about me when he hasn’t talked to me in years.”

“He does not,” Rey agrees.

“But then again, anyone gets to say whatever they want of me. I just—I wish I didn’t care.”

“That you care is a sign of your heart,” Rey tells him. “A sign that you’re not what he thinks you are. If you were, you wouldn’t care at all. Only a demon wouldn’t care that his own uncle thinks he’s a demon.”

“Do you ever feel like you’re too much for your own head?” he asks her.

“No, I frequently feel like I’m not enough for it.” The words slip out of her lips and Ben sits up and now he’s pulling her head onto his shoulder.

“Your turn,” he mutters and Rey laughs and she closes her eyes. “You are enough,” he tells her. 

“I know,” she says. “Just sometimes I feel like everyone’s going to look at me and realize that I’m nothing from nowhere and I’m just faking it.”

“You’re doing wonderfully,” Ben growls. “And everyone can see just where you’ve come from and just how much you’re taking on and that you’re doing it really well.”

“Except for that little interview hiccup.”

“If it wasn’t that, it would be something else. This is the Glass Palace—we mess up all the time here. If we’re not cleaning up six fires a day we started ourselves, we aren’t doing our jobs right.” She gives him a wry smile. 

“That’s something, I suppose,” she says.

“Yeah,” he replies. Then he shifts next to her. “I want you to know that I am showing great restraint by not figuring out what the fuck happened to your parents and sending some guys after them.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Rey says. “You sound like Unkar Plutt, and I know you mean well but…”

“All right,” he says. “Then I’m showing great restraint by not finding out what happened to them and then blasting them in the media. That better?”

Rey kisses his neck. “Yes,” she says. “That’s better.” Then she pauses. “You had him arrested, didn’t you? Unkar Plutt?”

“I might have suggested to the head of the Investigations Bureau that it’d be worth checking out his shop,” Ben says. “Very casually. Definitely not an order from the President’s office.”

Rey rests a hand on his chest, fiddling with the button of his shirt. “I love you,” she whispers. 

“I love you,” he replies without missing a beat.

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

“Thank you for taking care of _me_.”

He drops his lips down to hers and she sighs into his mouth. His arms wrap themselves around her waist, pulling her a little closer to him.

There’s a knock on the door. “Mr. President,” comes Tenel’s voice. “Mitaka just called over. He says you need to get back downstairs.”

Ben sighs and Rey pulls away. “No rest for the wicked, I suppose,” he tells her as he gets to his feet, straightens his jacket, and departs.

-

Zhellday finds Rey in jeans and a brightly colored t-shirt, her hair in a ponytail for the first time in a very long time. She’s sitting in the office of Every Child Every Home across from a tall woman named Gabrede Gilbpopi with a no-nonsense attitude who reminds Rey of every social worker she’d ever known growing up. “I want to be clear, ma’am,” Gabrede says, “That we’d love to have you volunteer for us, but that stability is important for the children at this stage.”

“Yes,” Rey agrees firmly.

“So I hope you understand when I say that if this is a press stunt, or something you’re doing to fill your free moments, we’d rather have your fundraising.”

Rey nods. “I want to be here,” she says. “Every Zhellday. It matters to me and I will tell my staff to prioritize it.”

Gabrede smiles. “Well in that case,” she says. “Let’s get you set up.”

Rey ends up with a group of five fifth graders, helping them with their homework. She reads passages aloud from the book two of them are sharing, gives encouraging smiles to the one who is struggling with his multiplication problems, and just listens to them. She draws each of their faces in her notebook.

“That’s very good Ms. Rey,” says a boy named Kaitar. “Where’d you learn to draw like that?”

“I taught myself,” Rey says. “We didn’t have art classes in Jakku.”

“I like art classes,” he tells her. “I like not having to feel stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” Rey tells him firmly.

“Yes I am,” he replies. “Everyone says so.”

“Well, everyone’s wrong.”

“My dad thought so,” he mumbles.

“And your dad was wrong. I have a secret to tell you. Don’t share it.” She leans forward and whispers in his ear, “Grown ups are wrong all the time.”

He smiles up at her. “You promise?”

“I promise.” 

-

People stop talking about Luke’s article towards the end of the week, but it’s clear that it’s still on Ben’s mind. He’s distant, off in his own mind a fair amount.

They go to a reception for Veterans of the Mandalorian Wars, where his hand doesn’t leave the small of her back and she knows that he’s just touching her for comfort the whole time. They host a Grand Admiral from Mon Calamari who seems to have known Ben since he was a boy for a state dinner, and though Ben smiles, Rey can also see that he’s off in his own mind the whole time. She wakes up in the middle of the night several days later to find that he’s not in bed with her and at first she assumes he’s in the Situation Room and she’d slept through Thanisson coming to wake him up but after a moment, she hears the steady sound of machinery from down the hall and goes and finds that he’s in the gym.

“You need to rest,” she tells him and he looks up at her, startled.

“Can’t sleep,” he grunts a moment later, looking away from her. She crosses to him and reaches a hand out for him. He takes it.

“Try anyway,” she says.

He showers quickly, then climbs back into bed next to her, pulling her to his chest. She doesn’t know if he sleeps, just that she does, and when she wakes the bed is empty again.

It builds and builds and builds. There are more articles questioning the direction that Ben is taking the country in because he seems to be wholly absent from the healthcare debates and the majority leaders couldn’t be more thrilled. “The President understands that what we are legislating—it’s the will of the people,” says the House Majority Leader into a microphone one day. “We were elected to legislate; he was elected to govern. There’s a difference.”

The news anchors cut to Hux, whom Rey could see was livid despite his tight smile. His eyes looked like they could kill through sheer force of will alone as he said, “The President is, I’m sure, waiting to step in should the discussions get out of hand,” but as far as Rey could see, he had no intention of stepping in, and when, the night before the dinner she and Bazine and Tenel were planning, she asked him about it, he just grunted and said, “I don’t know how to fix it. Let them try,” before making to leave the room.

“Ben,” Rey calls and he pauses before disappearing, looking back over his shoulder. “I’m not trying to attack you. I’m trying to help you. To have your back.” She swallows. “Whatever it is you’re thinking—”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” he replies heavily. “That’s the problem. And I can’t afford that. I can’t—” his chest is heaving and he looks like a caged animal all of a sudden, frightened of its captors, just wanting the pain to stop. “You can’t help me if I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

She doesn’t reply right away. She just watches him standing there, breathing, not coming back to her, but not leaving her alone. _How many directions is he drawn in, _she wonders. _And if he feels the call of all of them, is it ripping him apart?_

And he’s starting to let himself hear the call of them all. Where before he’d shut out the voices he didn’t want to work with completely, now he feels the tug of them, the demands and visions of those he’d once written off, whom he’d been elected to write off as much as he possibly could.

“I’m here with you,” she says at last. “You’re not alone anymore. Don’t forget that.”

Which is how he ends up back on the couch next to her, his arms around her tightly, holding her to his heart, not saying a single word.

-

“Approved?” Rey asks as she steps out into the bedroom. She’s wearing another sheath dress that doesn’t let her wear underwear—this time a deep emerald green with small yellow polka dots. Her hair is down, but clipped back from her face and she’s wearing a necklace that she’d found on her dresser a few days ago—a single diamond teardrop on a gold chain. There’d been a card with it from Leia. _I never wear this anymore but thought you might like it. Don’t keep it if you don’t want it. _As if Rey had ever not kept anything that came across her path like this in her life, as though she’d ever get rid of something this beautiful.

Bazine appraises her, then nods. “I think you’re allowed to dress yourself now.”

“Thanks,” Rey grumbles. “I’ve only been dressing myself since I was a kid.”

Bazine ignores her. “Your makeup looks good too.” 

That stops Rey short. She hadn’t done a lot of makeup. She’d assumed that Bazine would redo it and it was probably easier for her to work over something minimal than to make Rey completely wash her face and start from the beginning. 

“Anything I need to think about?” Rey asks her and Bazine gets to her feet. She looks oddly proud.

“No. I think you’re set.”

“Thanks,” Rey says. That, more than anything else, makes her nervous. Bazine telling her a whole litany of things she needs to remember, reminding her of how much this matters for her appearance and reputation as First Lady—that was what she’d been expecting. That is what she wants right now, to ground herself, to remind herself that this is a challenge and there’s never been a challenge she hasn’t faced head on. “That’s it?”

“That’s it?”

“No…I don’t know…don’t forget to eat with silverwear and not your hands?”

“Were you planning to eat with your hands?” Bazine asks dryly.

“No, but—”

“At this point, I don’t think there’s anything I can say to impose upon you the importance of all this that you haven’t already heard. What you do with it is up to you. If you need to make it stressful for yourself, I’m sure you can cook up some way to do that yourself.”

“Thanks,” Rey mutters again.

She heads down to the State Room alone. Ben had had four meetings put late onto his schedule so he’ll be coming an hour into the dinner which means everything is on Rey to do on her own. She greets officials and their spouses, she smiles and laughs and welcomes people to the Glass Palace, she gets into a lengthy conversation about transport with the Ambassador to Kessel and all in all, it feels almost natural.

Which is strange.

Who is this waitress who has everyone charmed and chatting with her? How has she managed to convince them all that she’s somebody, that she’s the First Lady and not some junk rat that the President had plucked up out of Jakku on a whim. Because they’re acting as though she’s important, as though she matters.

And in the back of her mind, a voice that sounds like Bazine’s says, _Good. Don’t let them change their minds._

“She sure has come a long way,” Rey hears behind her. The voice is a familiar one and when she takes a sip of her drink to subtly look around, she sees Phasma, speaking with a man Rey doesn’t recognize.

“Oh?” he asks.

“Yes. You should have seen her at that first fundraiser. She was a fish out of water. Now she’s a fish half-submerged.” It sounds like it should be a compliment, except for the tone of Phasma’s voice makes it sound as though she has found a fly in her soup. “But I suppose that’s Coruscant for you. Everyone puts on airs here. And it’s rare that there’s any substance to that.”

“You don’t think there’s substance to her then?” The man lowers his voice to ask the question and Rey can’t hear Phasma’s answer because the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has walked up to her and is telling her how glad she is to finally meet her and by the time that there is a break in the conversation, Phasma and her conversation partner have moved on.

_Don’t let it eat at you, _a voice that sounds like Finn this time says. _She can be good at her job and still have no idea what she’s talking about. _

So Rey squares her shoulder and presses on.

The food is delicious, people seem to be happy and by the time that Ben slips in—later than he’d planned as they’re nearing the end of dinner—Rey feels almost in control. Maybe because it’s a more limited event than the fundraiser had been—not even thirty people where the fundraiser had been hundreds; or maybe it’s that she’s less afraid of people sizing her up; or maybe it’s just that she doesn’t care if they are because ultimately she doesn’t feel anxious. She feels equal to this. Perhaps she’s not perfect but she’s sure that none of these people are too. She’s sure that they, like she, like Ben, grapple with their imperfections, their own failings, the expectations of everyone around them. It makes them human and that’s all she needs—is for everyone to be human. She’s human too. 

It’s what lets her smile into Ben’s lips when they get back upstairs. It’s what makes her feel triumphant when she pulls him into her. She doesn’t feel like she’ll disappoint the whole world anymore. 

She feels almost like she might begin to belong.

-

Ben leaves for a week. He’s traveling out west, then swinging around to the northern part of the country that is essentially just empty plains. “Come with me?” he’d asked her before he’d left, but it had conflicted with Rey’s volunteering.

“I told them that I wouldn’t just skip out on them,” she says, and Ben nods, looking away. “Is that ok?”

He shrugs. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because—”

“It’s just the end of an era, right?” he says wistfully. “You were always going to start having a schedule. You were always going to have things that took your time. And I’m going to miss having you along for things.”

“I’ll still be along for things,” she says. “I’ll still be there.”

“No, I know,” he says quickly, pressing a kiss to her forehead to sooth her, but he still sounds sad. “It’ll just take getting used to. I’d gotten used to this and now…”

And now he’s gone for a week, and Rey volunteers teaching a fingerpainting class with the kids and gets invited over to dinner with the Chief Justice and has a photo opportunity with a college sports team that won a championship and was supposed to get a picture with the President except he’s out of town so Rey would have to do. She interviews three people who Bazine wants to hire to be legislative liaisons because she has decided that Rey needs legislative liaisons.

Each night, she wraps herself in one of Ben’s sweatshirts because it smells like him and is so delightfully engulfing and sleeps pretending he’s there with her, though he’s out west, probably still awake because of the time difference, and they haven’t been able to find times mutually compatible times to com one another. “Sorry,” Thanisson tells her the third time she tries comming him. “He’s with the field worker’s union.”

It’s all right though. He’ll be back. And she does her best to put away that anxious voice in the back of her mind that whispers to her—_but what if he doesn’t?_

It’s not that she’s lonely. She’s seeing plenty of people and actually feels like her days are filling properly now. Bazine has her scheduled for things for the next month, and somehow Rey thinks that stretch of time will only get longer the more time she spends in the Glass Palace. But it does make her wish she had someone in the Residence with her. It’s a different space when she shares it with Ben, even when he comes back late. She hasn’t lived by herself since before Finn and Rose, and she hadn’t much liked being alone all the time. Even when she’d been frustrated about not having enough space to herself in the trailer, she’d been glad of having them there. It had made it feel like home—a family she’d found if she didn’t get to have a family of her own.

_He’ll be back_, she tells that anxious voice. _Of course he’ll be back. _

And he is. Late on Benduday—so late it’s essentially Primeday—but he’s back and Rey’s waiting in the transport for him as he crosses the tarmac from Airforce One. 

His face splits into the widest smile at the sight of her. “I didn’t know you were coming to get me,” he murmurs as he settles into the seat next to her and she just hums and climbs onto his lap and keeps his mouth occupied for a long while as the transport drives. 

“Good trip?” she asks after a while. They’re both getting overheated and as much as Rey would like to get carried away in a transport, she doesn’t need it to be while there’s a poor driver in the front seat doing his best to ignore just how long they’ve been necking. She strokes the lines of his face with the tips of her fingers. She thinks she’s almost memorized it—the way his jaw curves, the line of his cheekbones. She thinks she’s almost at the point where she can see him with her eyes closed, just by touching him.

“Decent,” he replies. “Glad to be home.” And he cups her rear forcefully, rubbing her hips against his. He’s hard in his pants and has been for many long minutes. She can tell from the way he’s breathing that he’s closer than he should be, given how much longer they’re going to be in the transport. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she says. “Also I stole your sweatshirt.”

“Which one.”

“Your Chandrila one.”

He groans. “Of course you stole the good one.”

“I’m a girl of refined tastes,” she replies, sniffing which makes them both laugh because they both know how far from the truth that is. 

She shifts off his lap and settles in the seat next to him, her legs thrown over his lap, and he reaches across her to grab her seatbelt and buckles her in. “Oh now you’re concerned for my safety,” she laughs.

“A quick reassessment of my priorities,” he grins. “I’d like to keep you alive, if at all possible.”

They sit there quietly for a long moment, hand in hand. Ben’s thumb strokes along the edge of her hand and she can’t help but smile as she leans her head on his shoulder.

“Question for you,” Ben begins when they’re maybe ten minutes away from the Palace.

“Yes?” Rey asks.

“Your birthday is coming up.” 

She swallows. 

She hadn’t even thought about that. She doesn’t do birthdays. Birthdays suck when everyone who’s supposed to care about them dies or leaves. Finn and Rose had learned that Rey’s birthdays were aggressively normal, mundane, routine. There weren’t gifts, there weren’t special dinners, or parties, or anything. She hadn’t told Ben her birthday was coming up because she wanted to forget she had a birthday at all. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t need to do anything,” Rey says. “We don’t have to—”

“What do you _want_,” he says, pushing on and she can tell he’s got the wrong of it, that he thinks she’s being a pennypincher, or that she’s unused to something special, not that she wouldn’t want it. “It’s not a matter of need. If there’s a day where we do something special to celebrate you, what would it be?”

And she doesn’t know how to get out of it. She doesn’t want to go have the long conversation about how she deserves to be happy, about how he’s _not_ her parents and he loves her, about how he doesn’t understand or know how to understand that special lonely pain that is being left behind when you’re a child, even if there are things in his own life that have similar emotional echoes. She looks at his face, the way he’s trying to be kind, and thoughtful, and loving, and she doesn’t want to turn it into something it’s not. 

_And why does what it _has_ been have to define what it could be?_

She could hear him arguing—how much is this you just clinging to habits you developed in pain, a lifetime before you met me? Why does that have to be what governs us now?

And the answer falls from her lips before she even has time to think about them. “I want to see Finn and Rose,” she says. “I’ve missed them so much. You said that they could visit.”

And Ben’s face goes still. Too still. He looks down at his hands.

“I should have told you this,” he mutters. “I really should have, and I’m sorry I didn’t. There was never a right time.”

“What?” Rey asks, foreboding filling her. 

“Finn didn’t get cleared to enter the Glass Palace,” Ben says. “His dishonorable discharge meant that he is no longer cleared to ever enter military sites, and the Glass Palace is a—”

“But can’t you do something about that?” she demands, tears in her eyes. So many of them so fast. What does he mean, Finn can’t—“You’re the Commander in Chief of the—”

“It’s not coming from me. This is Praetorian Guard, and the Treasury Department. It’s the one area of the Executive where I don’t have direct control over what they do.”

“So can’t you tell the Treasury Secretary to—”

“No,” Ben says, sounding gutted. “No, I can’t. I wish I could. Even if I tried, nothing would get done by next week.”

And there are tears on her face. “He’s my best friend, Ben.” Crying isn’t the right word for it. Sobbing. 

“Rose can visit,” Ben says, sounding pained as he says it. “But not Finn. Rey—” he tries to pull her towards his chest, clearly wanting to comfort her but she just shakes her head.

“Fine,” she says. “Fine. If Finn can’t come, I want to go back to Jakku for my birthday. I want to see Finn for my birthday.”

Ben doesn’t reply right away. She can tell that he’s upset, but she doesn’t care. He’d asked her what she wanted for her birthday, after all. She’d told him nothing, and he’d pushed until he’d gotten this. How is she supposed to go the next however many years without seeing Finn? 

“We can arrange that,” Ben says at last. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

He takes a slow breath. “Do you want me to come? Or do you want to spend the day with your friends on your own?”

And her heart breaks. She knows he’s giving her the choice, knows that he’ll go along with whatever she says. But he’d wanted to celebrate her birthday with her.

“I want you to meet them,” she says. “I want them to meet you. But will you be able to take the day away from everything?”

He swallows. “Realistically no,” he replies. “Realistically I’ll get dragged away unless…” and he considers, and looks at her, then shakes his head. “No.”

“What?”

“No, it’s not an option.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not turning your birthday into a political trip. I am not going to.”

“Like...seeing Jakku?” 

“Yeah, seeing the governor, maybe trying to make nice with Nordau and Taplons. I can spend the day doing that and seeing you in the evening. Or the reverse. Or _whatever_.” He takes a deep breath. “But it’s your birthday. And I—”

“No, that’s perfect,” Rey says at once. “I love you, but I miss them. And I want to spend the day with both of you, but...but…”

“But you want time with them—just you and them,” Ben says. Then he nods. “Then I’ll have Mitaka put something together. And I’ll—” He takes a deep breath. “I’m not promising I can change it, but I’ll see if they can make an exception. I will try.” 

She pulls his face towards him and kisses him, her tongue sliding between his lips once again, and everything is perfect.

She’s going to see Finn again.

Ben is going to meet Finn and Rose.

So what if she has to go back to Jakku for it, this is exactly what she wants for her birthday.


	12. Chapter 12

“Good morning,” Ben whispers in her ear and she stirs. It’s still dark in the room. He doesn’t usually wake her up when he wakes and it takes her a moment to remember why he would today. “Happy birthday.”

She sighs as she stretches and turns to him, brushing her lips to his and wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Thank you,” she says. He is hard against her groin. “You have a birthday present for me?” And she rolls him onto his back and straddles his hips, rocking herself against him.

When had it started feeling like coming home, his tongue sliding into her mouth as he rolls her onto his chest? She’d spent so long in her life thinking that she was wholly unloveable—how could she possibly have these arms around her and have it feel as normal as breathing? She can’t remember what it felt like, being that woman who’d spent years longing for connection, longing for a soulmate. It’s like she’s known Ben all her days. It’s like everything is and always has been perfect because he’s there with her.

His hands are on her hips as she rubs herself along his shaft. He’s hard already and part of her wonders if he wakes up like that. She knows that men do sometimes, but Ben never sleeps in, and she never wakes up after him. Does he have to hold himself back as he climbs out of bed in the morning, wanting to hold her, to be in her? His notes sometimes make it sound like he never wants to leave her arms. Sometimes, she never wants to leave his.

She reaches down between them and begins to stroke his shaft, guiding him towards her but he makes a noise and she stops. “What?”

“Not yet,” he whispers and suddenly he’s pulling her oddly up his chest.

“Ben, what—” because her knees are on either side of his ribs now and—

And she’s groggy, but her lips form an _oh_ as she realizes exactly what he’s trying to get her to do.

He holds her up as she straddles his head, his hands just under her rear.

“I love you,” he whispers to her in the darkness. “I love you so much.”

And his tongue is on her, his hands are stroking her thighs and she’s leaning over him, against the headboard of the bed for balance.

Warmth rose up through her, her heart beating in time with the swirling of his tongue. Every motion felt like a prayer, a reverence, and when she comes, it’s so hard that she wonders if her heart will burst out of her chest from the sheer force of its pounding. She hears her lips producing sounds—some incoherent modifications of his name, or something like that. God, she can’t breathe. Or maybe she can only breathe because Ben’s there holding her up.

She ordinarily would collapse against his chest but he doesn’t let her. His hands are on her hips now, and his tongue isn’t done. He pauses long enough to look up at her with stars in his eyes, to kiss her thigh and murmur that she’s beautiful, that he loves her, that he could do this forever and fuck the rest of everything before he’s back and Rey loses herself in the way he feels, the way he makes her feel.

-

“I’ll see you this evening,” Ben says, kissing her brow before getting into the transport.

“I’d say send the senators my regards but I think we’d all know that would be a lie,” Rey says and he gives her a wry smile, and the guard closes the transport door and off he goes.

“Ma’am?” Jannah says, and Rey turns and gets into the second transport.

Everything is bright here, and hot. As they drive down familiar streets, Rey sees people staring at them. They aren’t used to one—much less multiple—official vehicles in Niima Outpost. Everyone’s faces are hungry, everyone’s faces are curious, and Rey sees herself in each one.

Had it always been like this? So dry and dirty? Had everyone’s faces always been this worn? Or had she just gotten used to how soft everything is in the capital. Had she really lived here? She knows every street the transport turns down, could probably have timed perfectly each motion it made with her eyes closed. And yet it’s different, somehow. She’s different. But she’s the same.

They pull up in front of the trailer that looks so much smaller than Rey remembers it and Finn and Rose burst out of the door and throw themselves at her.

“You’re here!” Rose squeals in delight and Rey could cry, she really could.

“Hey.” She’s more than a little choked up looking at Finn standing there looking so happy he might cry too.

And then his arms are around her, pulling her into the biggest bearhug he can manage, squeezing her ribs so tightly that it almost hurts. Not that she cares. No, Finn’s touch doesn’t fill her with that same glowy warmth that Ben’s does, but hugging him is right, is safe, is peace. She feels like she’s breathing differently than she had before now that she’s back here with Finn, and she can’t help but hum as they sway back and forth in the sunshine.

“What’s this fucking bullshit about how I can’t set foot on premises because I was dishonorably discharged?” Finn demands when they break apart, and she can hear anger under the teasing. “I’m on your list of three.”

“Listen, if I have to stand against a whole field of Praetorian Guards, I will,” Rey replies. “Ben says that he’ll see if there’s an appeal process for it. He’s not optimistic, but he’s going to try.”

“Yeah, because when I come to Coruscant, I’m gonna take advantage of being on that list of three, you know what I’m saying?” Finn says loudly. “That place doesn’t get to keep you away from me.”

“When do you think you’ll move?” Rey asks as the two of them lead her inside the trailer. They’ve cleaned it—a deep clean. Everything is shiny and the blankets on the old futon have been folded. “Wow, who knew all it would take was me moving out,” she grins at them.

“Well, we weren’t sure if—if he’d be coming with you,” Rose says matter-of-factly. “Do we call him the President? Ben?” She looks at Finn.

“President,” Finn says at once. “Until he specifies otherwise. And then probably still President.”

“Right, well…we sort of looked at ourselves two days ago and…yeah,” she smiles at Rey. “I’m not embarrassed about living in a trailer, but I would never live it down if it was a _messy_ trailer. Although maybe he’s used to mess by now.” She winks at Rey.

“There are people who clean up after me I’ll have you know,” Rey sniffs.

“Poor things,” Finn laughs and Rey elbows him.

“I’m not _that_ messy.”

“No, you’re just a packrat. And your clothes end up on every surface. Which I imagine hasn’t changed much.” Rey pinkens at that, and spies a box in the corner, labeled _Rey_ in Finn’s messy handwriting. “What’s in there?”

“We weren’t sure if you’d want it,” Finn says. “But we weren’t going to throw it out without checking first.”

He goes and brings the box over to the futon and Rey swallows.

Little drawings she’d made on napkins over the years, a dead plant she’d kept because she’d like the shape of it, knicknacks and oddities she’d found in the garbage plants, stuff she’d half-built just to do something with her hands. A photograph of her and Finn before he’d met Rose, eating ice cream and looking so very young. A picture of Maz, and the old revolver her foster mother had kept on her hip more for show than for need. She, like Bazine, had known the power of appearances. As far as Rey knew, she’d never shot it. Had never even loaded it.

“She’d be so happy for you,” Finn says, rubbing her shoulder. “And proud as all getup. She _hated _Nordau.”

“Yeah,” Rey mumbles. “Yeah, she would.”

They load the box into the transport so that it can make its way back to Rey’s new home and that’s when it really hits her. She’s probably never going to see this place again. Apart from today, apart from Finn and Rose, she has no reason to come back to Jakku. No one who mattered to her will be here anymore once they move. “When do you think you’ll leave?”

“Poe’s got a friend who’s looking into some places for us. Budget’s _tight_ and we’ll both need to find jobs fast, but we’re hoping two months? Four tops.”

“Who’s Poe?” Rey asks.

“He works at the hospital,” Finn says. “Got a bit friendly after you left, but he’s nice enough. The sort of person you just get along with.” He shrugs. “You’d like him. Poe Dameron?”

Rey’s eyes go wide. “He gave me my test results.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rey replies.

“Small world,” Finn grins. “He’s out here for his residency, but wants to get the _fuck_ out of Jakku as soon as he can once he’s done.” He winks at her. “So of course he and I would get along.”

And it’s just like old times. She listens to Rose’s stories about her classroom, and every piece of gossip Finn had heard at the diner. “Plutt’s place is falling down,” he tells her with glee. “No one’s reopening it. No one’s claiming it.”

“Serves him right,” Rey growls.

“They’re saying that the criminal charges being brought against him are gonna put him away for life,” Rose tells her. “And he’s even being held without bail too. Whoever wanted him gone—they got him gone.”

Rey takes a sip of water to hide her smile. Whoever it was who had picked up on Ben’s hint—they’d definitely gotten in good with her for this.

As the sun begins to inch down towards the horizon in the west, they walk down to Dex’s, where they’d agreed to meet Ben. She’d wanted Ben to see Dex’s, wanted a picture of the two of them to end up on a wall next to that article of hers. The heat is heavy even as the desert winds begin to cool in preparation for night time, but Rey feels positively light with Finn and Rose on either side of her. She feels buoyant. She feels like herself—the good parts of her that she’d had in Jakku. The parts of her she’s proud of. The parts she hadn’t remembered this morning but which had flooded back to her the moment she’d seen Finn’s face again.

The Praetorian Guard have cleared Dex’s completely of other customers, and Ben’s transport is parked right in front of it. When he sees them approach, he gets out of it. He’d been wearing a jacket and tie this morning. Both are gone now—whether because of the heat or because he was done being President for the day, Rey doesn’t know.

He smiles as he sees them all approach, and holds out his hand first to Finn, then to Rose, before bending and pressing a kiss to Rey’s cheek.

“Hi there,” he whispers.

“Hi,” she replies. Finn and Rose are climbing the steps up into Dex’s.

“Good day?” he asks her.

“Perfect,” she replies. “You?”

But something grabs his attention and everything happens so fast—too fast.

One moment he’s looking past her, his face concerned, then she hears three things in quick succession. “Blaster!” and two shots fired, and Ben is shoving her back behind him, then he goes very, very stiff.

He’s toppling down onto her, the full weight of him knocking her off her feet. Her head smacks against the concrete and stars fill her eyes as several pairs of hands grab Ben and shove him into the transport. There are hands on her too now, and she’s being thrown into the vehicle next to Ben and she sees a guard bending over Ben as the car’s wheels screech against the pavement and they’re off.

“Mr. President,” the guard is saying. Ben’s eyes are closed and there’s blood dripping from his lips, down his face, and Rey lets out a choked sob, her fingers clawing at her own skin.

There’s something wet on her face. Tears.

But when she takes her hands away, they come away red and everything gets a bit blurry.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the later-than-usual-on-a-sunday update. i did mean to get to it earlier but my morning got away from me and then i was out and about all day. hope i didn't leave you all hanging too much <3

“Ma’am, how many fingers am I holding up?”

Rey blinks. Everything’s blurry, but,

“Two.”

“Now?”

“One. Three.”

“All right.” The man in the white lab coat is familiar. He has dark, curling hair and a straight nose. “Ma’am, we’d like to give you a CT scan. You hit your head and we want to see what the damage is.”

Rey keeps blinking. Everything’s moving really fast—too fast. Too intensely. Her eyes don’t want to focus. Or maybe that’s because there are tears dripping down her face.

“Where’s Ben?” she asks him.

The doctor’s face twists sadly. “Can we scan?”

“He’s still alive?”

There’d been so much blood. All over her hands, all over the transport. The guard in the transport had kept on talking, speaking into his earpiece. _Falcon down. I repeat. Falcon down. Blue. _

“Ma’am—” the doctor begins.

“Is he going to be ok?”

How does she know him? Where has she seen him before? She hates hospitals.

“Dr. Dameron, please?” she mumbles, and his face softens.

“I can’t say anything,” he tells her as gently as possible. “Ma’am, you’re not his next of kin, or related to him.”

“He’s my soulmate,” she protests, tears leaking from her eyes.

“I know,” Dr. Dameron says. “I really know. But it’s HIPAA. Can I take you to the scan?”

She nods, and lets him help her to her feet.

The ward is eerily empty.

Vaguely she remembers patients being rushed out of it, Praetorian Guards commanding with military precision that no one without clearance was allowed to be nearby. Most of the hospital staff isn’t even there. It’s just Dr. Dameron, and Rey and some nurses.

“I thought you worked for the Databank,” she says as he settles her into a seat and begins setting up a machine on either side of her head, like a huge white helmet.

“I was covering,” he says. “Dr. Wexley was out sick. Not my usual area of focus, but we didn’t want to reschedule you.”

Because of Ben.

Because.

Tears fill her eyes again and she hears a whirring of a machine. Distantly, she’s aware that Dr. Dameron is telling her to try and stay still, as gently as he can because he can see that she’s crying.

He leads her back to one of the rooms. Then he gets her some pills to take. “They’re anti-inflammatories,” he tells her. “They’ll help with your head.”

Rey takes them then remembers.

“Finn,” she blurts out. “Finn and Rose.”

Dr. Dameron looks at her. “Yes?”

“They were at Dex’s. Are they ok?” Had they been put in a transport too?

“I don’t know, but I can try and find out,” he says slowly. Her face crumples and he takes a deep breath. “Not sure that they’ll be able to get past the Praetorian Guard right now, but if they can, I’ll tell them to come see you. You shouldn’t be alone.”

She doesn’t want to be alone.

She hates waiting.

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“Not until we have permission from his next of kin.”

“Leia will give it to me though. Why do I have to wait?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Ms. Johnson, if I could say more, I would, but—”

“Thank you,” Rey chokes out and looks away from him, pressing her face into her hands. Someone had wiped the blood off them.

“They’re stabilizing him,” Dr. Dameron says after a moment. “They’re prepping him for surgery now.”

She melts into more tears the moment Dr. Dameron is out of the room, burying her face in the sterile white pillow that’s nowhere near as comfortable as the one on her bed, Ben’s bed, at home.

Home.

She’d waited so long to find him. She hadn’t thought he was even there. And now he’s—

She wishes Dr. Dameron were there so she could ask him for something that could put her to sleep. That can happen, right? At hospitals? She’d seen a few shitty medical dramas on the holovision at Dex’s and she’d definitely seen patients ask to be put to sleep so they could just cease to feel things for a little while. 

She cries, and cries, and cries, until there are no tears left in her body.

Some time later, she hears a faint knock on the door and looks up. A Praetorian Guard—the one who had grabbed Ben and shoved him in the transport—is standing there, looking grim.

“Hi,” Rey mumbles.

“Ma’am,” he says quietly, crossing the room. “I know everything’s...I know you’re undoubtedly distressed. But we need to talk about some of what happened at the diner.”

Rey nods numbly. “What’s your name?” she asks him.

“Tysrich,” he replies.

She nods. “Where’s Jannah?”

“Jannah stayed behind to be the ID agent. She was the one who saw the blaster and the one who shot the shooter.”

Rey nods numbly. “Is she ok?”

“She’s fine,” Tysrich says. “She wasn’t hit. Only the President was.”

A lump lodges itself in Rey’s throat. “Why?” she whispers. “Why would they want to kill him?”

Tysrich hesitates. “We’re inclined to believe he wasn’t the target, though we’re still verifying that.”

Rey’s eyes go wide. “What? Then—”

“Can you describe to me your relationship with a gang leader named Unkar Plutt?” Tysrich asks.

A second could have passed. A minute. An hour. A year.

“He was my boss,” she says. “I worked in his garage.”

“Did you have any reason to suspect that he might wish any ill towards you?”

“No, I—I never caused him trouble.” Except… “I told Ben he...because he might have…”

Tysrich nods. “Thank you,” he says, getting to his feet. “I think that’ll be—”

“Did this happen because of me?” Rey asks. “Because I—”

“I can’t make any statements right now,” Tysrich says. _Why_ won’t anyone just tell her what’s going on? Why does she have to drag it out of them with what little capacity she has right now? She wants to scream.

Instead, she asks, “But you have suspicions?”

“I do.”

“What are they?” Rey asks. “Please.” Tears are welling in her eyes again. She’d thought she’d cried them all, but clearly she had not.

“If I had to guess,” Tysrich tells her hesitantly. “And this is a _guess_, ma’am, not anything more. If I had to guess, I’d say that he told some of his...associates that if you came back to Jakku, you were to be taken care of. For getting his operation shut down, for getting him locked up. It was federal, not state, agents who arrested him, and it was right after you went to Coruscant. He may not be the brightest man, but he can probably put two and two together.”

Rey hears herself breathing.

She’s completely sure that Tysrich is right. It’s oddly stabilizing.

“Thank you,” she tells him.

He nods. “Our guards are here, ma’am. They’ll keep you safe.” And then he’s gone.

-

The hours tick on. Or Rey assumes they do. There’s no chrono in the room, and she hasn’t worn a wristwatch in ages. It is completely dark outside now. Dr. Dameron comes into check on her again, and tells her that Finn and Rose are all right, but that they haven’t been allowed into the hospital. “It’s on lockdown,” he tells her.

There’s no Bazine here because it had been a personal trip. Even Ben’s usual entourage of staff had been minimal.

That’s the first time she thinks to ask after the staff. When she’s told that they’re in the waiting room, she clambers out of the hospital bed and walks slowly down the hallway to where they’re sitting.

There are two men she doesn’t recognize and Zoby Tiegler, who is sitting there on his mobilecom, talking to someone. “I’ll com you back,” he says the moment that Rey comes into the waiting room, getting to his feet. “Ma’am.”

“Hi,” she says.

“How are you feeling?”

She half-shrugs, her face crumpling again, but she doesn’t cry this time. She sits down in the seat next to Zoby, who nods, understanding.

They go back to waiting, but at least she’s not by herself anymore.

-

God she wishes she were asleep.

This is miserable.

This is worse than wondering where her parents are.

At least then, she’d been too young to understand what was happening to her. She’d been so sure they’d be back, so confident in that. At least now, time has numbed the pain of that.

Ben, at least, had promised he’d always come back to her. But what if he couldn’t?

This is unbearable.

She’s too aware of everything.

She hates hospitals.

-

Someone brings her bag to her.

She takes out her pen and notebook, hoping so very much that there’s something in there that’ll distract her.

She sees the first letter she’d written to him, the little doodle of him she’d drawn.

Shaking, she flips to the next blank page, rifling through notes about government, and more letters, the cards Ben had left her on mornings that he’d woken before she had.

_Dear Ben, _she writes, her hand trembling.

_Please don’t die. Please please please don’t die._

_Please._

And the way he had looked that morning, the peaceful joy on his face as she'd straddled his face, the carefree feeling that had always accompanied them to bed overwhelms her, but this time, when it takes her breath away, she wants to scream from the pain and fear of it all. There’s nothing comforting about it. Nothing even a little bit comforting about it.

What if that was the last time she—the last time they—

She closes the notebook again. She doesn’t have anything left to say.

Nothing else matters.

She just wants to stop hurting. She just wants him to be all right.

-

A door opens and Leia comes in, followed by Han and, to Rey’s surprise, Luke Skywalker.

“Senator,” Zoby says, standing again.

She gives them all a sad grimace. “Would you mind giving us the room?” she asks and Ben’s staff get to their feet and leave the waiting room. Leia comes and sits down next to Rey, wrapping her arms around her tightly.

And Rey’s eyes keep surprising her. She keeps thinking she’s out of tears, but the moment that Leia’s embracing her, she’s crying like a child again. “Sweetheart,” Leia murmurs. “Oh, sweetheart.”

Rey doesn’t try to talk. She just lets herself cry until she’s done. Leia holds her for every second of it, like a mother would her own child.

At last, Rey sits back, rubbing her eyes. “Are you all right?” It’s Han, asking the question.

“Concussion,” she says thickly. “They gave me medicine for it though.”

“You should be lying down,” Leia says gently, but Rey just shakes her head.

“Ben would want it. He’d want you to take care of yourself,” Han says.

Which is how the three of them shuffle Rey back to the room she’d been in before. Leia helps her into the bed, and Rey lies back.

“I just want to know he’s ok?” Rey mumbles. “But they won’t tell me anything because I’m not his next of kin.”

“He’s in surgery now,” Leia tells her at once. “I’ll tell them to tell you everything. I didn’t think that they wouldn’t have.” She turns and looks at Han, who quietly leaves the room at once. “The shot was bad and it took a while to stabilize him in the ER when he was brought in, but they’re operating and we won’t have more updates until the surgery is over.”

“That he hasn’t died yet is a good sign,” Luke says and Rey turns to look at him, and white hot anger flares in her.

“Why are you even here?” she snaps at him. “You hated him. You didn’t care how that made him feel, or what it did to him. You thought he was a _monster_.”

Luke stares at her as though he’s been completely off guard. Next to her, Leia’s breath hitches.

Luke opens his mouth, then closes it again. Then his face changes. It sort of goes dull the way that Ben’s had when he’d felt horrible about himself. And when he speaks, it’s with none of the angry confidence he’d spoken to her with before. “Because I don’t want him to die,” he says. “Because that’s my nephew and I—” He looks at Leia.

Leia is looking at Rey.

Rey, who looks between Leia and Luke and says, still fuming, “If he gets out of this alive, you _tell_ him that. Or else I’ll never forgive you.”

Luke blinks, and nods, and swallows.

“How was your birthday?” Leia asks her, clearly trying to change the subject and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Han slip back into the room. “With your friends. Before all this.”

Rey looks at the window for a moment. “They won’t let Finn and Rose in,” she says. “It was lovely to see them. But they won’t…”

And Han walks towards the door once again. “Han,” Leia calls after him.

“I’ll be back,” he says.

“There’s protocol!” she shouts.

He waves a hand as if to shush her and then he’s gone.

Rey has no idea how he does it. She doesn’t particularly know that she _wants_ to know. But thirty minutes later, he’s back with Finn and Rose.

“Rey!” and Finn’s arms are around her so fast and she’s crying again. Finn’s here. Finn’s _here, _and once again his touch isn’t the same warmth and comfort that Ben’s is, but she doesn’t care at all about that because Finn with his arms around her makes her feel like things might be ok.

“What did you do?” Leia asks Han.

“Need to know basis,” he shrugs.

“You’re ok?” Rey asks Rose. She’s squeezing each of their hands.

“We’re fine,” Rose says. “We were inside when the shots happened, and then the Praetorian Guards held us for interrogation to see if we had any idea what was going on. Then we tried to come here to see you, but they wouldn’t let us in. Then the reporters saw us and—”

“Reporters?”

“Yeah,” Finn says. “I’d say just about every reporter in the country, in the _world_ is camped outside right now. We got sort of mobbed.”

Rose is nodding. “Because they know we know you. And we tried to go home for a while but there were _more_ reporters waiting outside of the house. And we couldn’t go to Dex’s because it’s got shut down today for more investigations.”

“Has anyone spoken to them?” Rey asks.

“The reporters?” Leia asks sharply.

“Yes.”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” she says. Then she glances up at the ceiling. There’s a holovision there. It’s turned off. Han gets to his feet and turns it on, shuffling through one of the three channels in the hospital until he finds the news.

“Neither the Glass Palace nor Jakku General has made a statement on the President’s condition as he enters his sixth hour of surgery.” Six hours. It feels like an eternity. “The Vice President has been on a diplomatic trip to Nar Shaddaa and is in safe hands, and will be returning to the New Galactic Republic tomorrow, but for now, it is unclear who is in charge of the government’s functioning while the President is unconscious.”

“Damn it,” Luke says at once. “God damn it.”

Leia’s already pulling out a mobilecom and even as she dials, Luke says, “Leia, you can’t do anything.”

“I’m not doing anything, I’m just comming Mitaka to make sure he knows—”

“I’m sure he knows this is what they’re saying on the news. _You_ can’t do anything right now. If _anyone_ finds out, they’ll slap you so fast for violating the chain of command and—”

“Luke, my son is in the hospital, I want to help.”

“And he won’t thank you for making this harder when he gets out of surgery. It’s already a mess without having to indict his mother for doing a job she has neither been elected nor appointed to.”

“What is—” Rey asks and Leia turns to her quickly.

“The Constitution outlines what happens if Ben dies,” she says. “Who takes control of the government, who leads everything. But the Vice President is out of the country, and even if he weren’t, Ben’s not dead, but is clearly _not_ giving orders right now, so if Mitaka tries to order _anything_ that’s beyond standard procedure right now—closing the stock market, for example—he could get slapped with treason charges. Not to mention that—” She looks at Luke. “I’m _not_ trying to usurp power.”

“You think that his party won’t twist it however they see fit? It’s unlikely that they’ll take anything you do lightly—especially now. Sit on it, Leia. You can’t fix everything in the world.”

“I can try,” she retorts hotly.

“And doing this won’t make Ben safe any faster.”

It’s not Luke who says it, but Han, looking at his wife with his deep brown eyes that are flecked with shades of hers. Leia gets up off the bed and a moment later, she’s tucking herself under Han’s chin, crying softly. He holds her wordlessly, stroking her hair, his eyes distant.

“If the Vice President is safe, can’t he just issue orders from wherever he is?” Rey asks, wanting desperately to change the subject. Also wanting desperately to hide that she has never, in fact, met the Vice President, and every time Tenel had described the role, the words “useless” and “redundant” had been used.

Luke shakes his head. “If he does anything while the President is alive without the President’s consent, he might be slapped with treason charges too.”

“Handy,” Rey mutters.

“This government wasn’t designed with modern medicine in mind. If the President got gutshot two hundred years ago, that’d be it. No six hour surgery to fix the damage.”

She sighs, and closes her eyes. Finn squeezes her hand. And she can tell from the fact that silence has stretched throughout the room that they are back to waiting.

-

A doctor comes in the room when it is so long past midnight that Rey can’t even care what time it is anymore. She’s in green scrubs and when she speaks, she sounds tired. “The President is out of surgery.” And the whole room relaxes as the doctor continues speaking. “He’ll be unconscious for the next few hours. We’re keeping him under, but plan to let him wake up in the morning. We need to make sure he’s as stable as possible. It was a close shave when he arrived, and there were some complications during the surgery.”

“But he’s ok now?” Rey asks sharply. She doesn’t like the sound of that word—complications.

“To the best of our capacity, yes ma’am. May be a bit touch and go for the rest of the night, but we’ll keep a close eye on him.”

Rose and Finn are hugging her, Leia and Luke and Han are all holding one another—the silence is broken. The wait is over. Ben’s ok.

“Can I see him?” she asks softly.

The doctor pauses, then nods. “He’s still under, and we’re going to continue with some post-op work. But you can see him for a moment.”

And Rey follows her down the hallway to the room. Two nurses are attending to him, and there’s a huge square of white gauze taped to his stomach, and oxygen tubes under his nose. Rey blinks furiously as she stares at him. She’ll cry as much as she can while he’s maybe dying, but he’s alive. He’s _not_ dying.

“I’m going to tell the staff,” Rey says when she returns to her room. Her head still hurts—a lot, actually. She probably needs more pain reducers, or some sleep. But out she goes into the hallway to the waiting room.

The two staffers whose names Rey still doesn’t know are lying there, using their jackets as pillows. Zoby is staring at the holovision in the waiting room, his arms crossed, his expression grim.

“He’s out of surgery,” Rey says and all three men scramble to their feet. “He’s all right. They’re keeping him asleep for another few hours.”

Relief spreads across Zoby’s face. He nods, as the other two men hug one another, and smile at her.

“How are you doing, ma’am?” Zoby asks her.

“I’m…” she can’t feel anything at all, really. Even the doctor’s words don’t feel real to her. Maybe they never will. Not until she’s holding Ben’s hand again, looking into his eyes.

In the stretching silence, a reporter from the holovision says, “It’s a long night, and it will only get longer as we wait for news of the President’s surgery.”

She looks at it, then at Zoby. “I should talk to them.”

The words are barely out of her lips when they hit her. It’s one thing to give an interview in a controlled setting to one reporter who’d taken full advantage of her naivité; it’s another to answer the questions of however many are out there, hounding her for whatever they can get live on television to broadcast immediately across the country. Somehow she’s not frightened though. She feels—not that she can do this—but that it would be laughable to think that she couldn’t.

Zoby stiffens for a moment before saying, tightly, “If you can. Do you feel up to it?”

Rey shrugs. “I can do it.” When had her voice ever sounded that firm, that confident? It feels almost as though someone else is saying it—except it’s her. Her in complete, calm control. And oddly, she doesn’t feel as though it’s because she’s the functional First Lady of the New Galactic Republic.

No—she’s someone who had survived Unkar Plutt, who had starved and scrounged, who had _survived_. Maybe she’s too wrung out, too exhausted to feel weighed down; or maybe she’d needed to come back to Jakku to really remember that, to feel it in her blood and bones, that she was forged in hardship and she can persevere, can bear anything.

Zoby nods. “Let me com Mitaka. And if you can, find something less...covered in blood.”

Which is how Rey notices that, even if her hands had been cleaned for her, the nice top she’d been wearing is, in fact, covered in blood.

She returns to her room. “Can I borrow your sweatshirt?” she asks Rose. “I’m going on holo.”

Rose hands it to her without pausing and Rey puts it on, zipping it up to the neck.

“Do you want me to help, Rey?” Leia asks her.

Rey wants to say yes. Leia is Ben’s mother, she is familiar with speaking live on holovision, facing a thousand reporter questions. But she shakes her head. “I’ve got this.”

She meets Zoby back in the waiting room. “Mitaka says you’re good to go,” he tells her. “If they ask you _anything_ political, pivot to the Glass Palace. There’ll be a briefing there in the morning where they can address their concerns. You just want to put everyone’s hearts and minds at rest. Got that?”

“Yes,” Rey says.

“None of—”

“I can learn from my mistakes,” she cuts him off.

He nods. Then they step towards the front door of the hospital and Rey is immediately blinded by cameras.

“Ms. Johnson!” Fifty reporters start shouting questions at her, and Rey’s head is spinning from all the lights, and throbbing a bit from her concussion. But she steadies herself, and takes a deep breath and begins.

“He’s out of surgery. He’s being looked after in post op now.” More flashes of cameras, more people asking her questions and Rey holds up her hands. “Please,” she says. “It’s late, it’s been a long day, I can’t hear anything if you’re all asking at once.”

“Have you seen him?” someone calls.

“Yes, briefly,” she says. “They’re keeping him unconscious for a few more hours, just to make sure everything stabilizes. I’ll see him again in the morning.”

“Has the Glass Palace been told?”

Rey nods. “Zoby Tiegler spoke with the Chief of Staff a few minutes ago,” and then, to get ahead of the questions, “Any questions you have about anything in that arena, I’ll direct you to the Press Secretary at tomorrow’s briefing. I’ve been here all day and will be here as long as he is.”

“Sources are saying that the shooter was after you and not the President. Do you have a comment?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Zoby says, stepping in, reaching for Rey’s upper arm to guide her away from the reporters. “And it’s dangerous to speculate publicly on an ongoing investigation.”

“I don’t have a comment,” Rey says quietly and Zoby freezes and there are more flashing lights. “Except that I’m very tired and I’ve spent most of today crying, and I’m still alive and so is Ben. The shooter isn’t though.”

And she lets Zoby drag her away.

“Sorry,” she says, not entirely sure that she feels sorry.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Could have been worse.”

She looks at him. “Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

She finds Finn and Rose in the hallway outside her room. Finn pulls her into another bearhug and she lets herself just breathe in his arms, while Rose comes up behind her and hugs her as well.

“We’re going to head home,” Finn says. “Unless you want us to—”

“No,” Rey interrupts. “Go sleep. Thank you for coming.” Her voice breaks and Finn’s face softens.

“Always,” he tells her firmly. “Like I said—always going to take advantage of being on your list of three.” She returns Rose’s sweatshirt and they depart with a wave and a promise that they’ll try and visit again if they can and Rey returns to her room.

Leia, Han, and Luke are still there. Leia reaches for Rey’s hand and squeezes it. “We’re going to a hotel,” she tells her quietly. “But we’ll be back in the morning.”

Rey nods. She’s out of words. She’s just out of them. Words and tears. So she climbs into the bed and is asleep almost as soon as her head touches the pillow.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be TROS spoilers in the end notes, but this fic was written Pre-TROS so you will find nary a spoiler moving forward.

She wakes to the sun shining strong against her eyes. Her face scrunches. Ben must have opened the curtain before he went into the office. It’s never this bright.

She stretches and rolls towards where Ben usually sleeps to press her face into his pillow and she hits a railing. Her eyes snap open, and everything floods back. She is in a hospital. Ben spent most of the night in surgery. She has a concussion.

She clambers out of the bed, and pokes her head out of the room and almost runs right into Dr. Dameron.

“Morning,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

She takes stock. Her mouth is filmy from sleep, there’s a crick in her neck and—something she hadn’t noticed yesterday at all—a pain in her rear and shoulder. Her head doesn’t hurt, though. “Ok,” she says slowly.

“Head feeling ok?”

“Yes,” she says. “Feeling a bit bruised but—”

“We’ll get you some more painkillers,” he says. “I can grab you those while you see him.”

“He’s awake?” Rey asks sharply, and Dr. Dameron nods. “Why didn’t someone come get me?”

“He told us to let you sleep,” Dr. Dameron says, raising both hands defensively. “Hard to defy a direct order from the President of the New Galactic Republic.”

“Well, I’m awake now,” Rey huffs and Dr. Dameron leads her down the hallway to another room. There are two Praetorian Guards standing outside of it. One of them opens a door wordlessly and Rey slips past him.

Ben’s strapped to a heart monitor, and has an IV dripping something into him, but he’s lying there quietly, watching the news. His eyes flick to the door when it opens and his face changes. Relief spreads around him and he’s turning off the holovision as Rey pelts towards him.

“I was so worried,” she chokes out, her hand finding his heart as if trying to be completely sure he was alive. “Ben—I—”

She kisses him, tears streaming down her face now and he strokes her cheek, his lips hungering for hers. His breath is horrible, but she’s sure hers is too and she really could not possibly care about that now. Ben’s alive. Her whole body is trembling as she pulls away, tracing his mouth with her fingers, his face, his neck and shoulders. He’s got stubble growing in from the day before, and his hair is greasy, and there are horrifyingly dark circles under his eyes. As her fingers creep down his chest, his breath hitches, and she pauses.

“It’s lower down, isn’t it?” she asks him, and he nods, working his jaw slightly. Then she leans her head forward and presses her forehead to his again.

“How are you?” he asks her. “They said you hit your head.”

“I’m fine,” she says. “They gave me some medicine, and I feel better.” He nods, still looking concerned, and Rey rolls her eyes. “_You_ were the one who got shot, Ben.”

“Yeah, but…” his voice fades and he gives her a wry smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “But anything I say you’re going to twist back at me, aren’t you?”

“What were you going to say?”

“That I was still worried about you, that I didn’t want you to get hurt.” He swallows. “The first thing I needed to know after I woke up was what happened to you. The only thing I remember is the gunshot and then...and if they—if you’d been—” The heart monitor beeps a little bit faster and he glares at it, muttering, “Shut up,” under his breath.

“I’m ok,” she promises. “A little bruised, but fine.”

Ben sighs. His hand is trailing up and down her arm, and his eyes drift closed. He looks almost at ease. Or maybe just very tired. “Do you want to sleep?” she asks him.

“Only if you promise to be there when I wake up,” he says.

Rey lifts his palm and presses a kiss to it and he sighs.

“Have your parents been by?” she asks him, and his eyes open again.

“Yeah,” he says. “An hour or two ago. Them and…” his voice trails away and he swallows again.

“You ok?” she asks.

“Honestly getting shot was less surprising than that,” Ben grunts. Then he looks at Rey. “He said he was glad I was ok.” And his eyes are a little too bright not to be full of tears. Rey leans forward and kisses the skin just under each of his eyes and he shakes a little, holding them back.

“Where are they now?”

“They went back to Coruscant,” he says. “I’m supposed to be getting medevaced back as well now that you’re awake. Don’t want to clog up Jakku General more than we already have.” He looks guilty all of a sudden. “The next military hospital is eighty miles from here. They brought people who needed care over there but…”

“It’s over,” Rey says. “You can’t do much about it at this point.”

“No,” he agrees. “No, except get out of their hair.” He groans. “God it’s going to be a mess getting back. Mitaka shut down the stock market and closed the airports in Jakku while I was under general anesthesia.”

“Would you have told him to?”

“Yes,” Ben says. “But the point is—”

“So? He did his job well then, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say, but other people might have different ideas.”

“Well, tell them to stuff it. You got shot. He was being practical. It’s not like he was staging a coup, and if you need me to tell them that, I will.”

Ben laughs, then coughs and moans. “It hurts to laugh,” he mutters. Rey squeezes his hand and he squeezes it back. “You did good last night.” He jerks his chin towards the holovision. “When you went out to talk to them. Calmed everyone right down, I think.”

“Did I?” she asks.

“Yeah. But then again, I think the press has decided you like to speak your mind and they encourage it because it gets them more attention.” He shrugs. “So maybe not. I don’t know. But I liked it.” He tugs her hand slightly and she gets the sense he wants to kiss her again, so she leans forward and he does. It’s long, and lingering this time.

“You’re alive,” he whispers.

“That’s my line,” she whispers back.

He smiles. “It’s strange,” he says. “I woke up and it was like—I don’t know. Like my whole soul was in pain not knowing if you were ok. Like I’d spent hours and hours and hours wondering if you were alive and I just...seeing your face was all I needed to feel better.”

“Probably whatever’s in this helps,” she half-jokes, nodding towards this IV. He huffs, amused. But she goes serious after a moment. “Your soul and mine. Always. Maybe you felt that way because I was,” and her throat gets thick and her eyes prickle and she blinks furiously. Ben had kept his tears at bay, she can too.

Except she can’t.

A single tear drips down her cheek a she says, “I just found you. And I was just starting to maybe begin to wrap my brain around this. And it was my birthday, and I _hate_ hospitals, and—and—”

“Hey,” he says and he’s pulling her close again, doing his best to wrap his arms around her given the various things poking into him and that there’s a healing incision on his stomach she probably shouldn’t put any pressure on. “Hey.”

“I just found you. I wasn’t ready to lose you. I’m not ready to lose you.”

“You won’t,” he promises. “Not ever.”

She stays with him until Dr. Dameron comes in and tells him that they’re going to be putting him in a military chopper for transportation to a hospital in Coruscant. Rey holds his hand as they wheel him up to the hospital rooftop, and straps herself into a seat next to him on the chopper.

He passes out in the air, and Rey takes her notebook out of her bag and begins to write.

_Dear Ben,_

_You’re alive._

_You’re alive and I can’t breathe I’m so relieved. _

_I love you so much. I don’t think I can say it enough._

_I’m glad that Luke apologized. I hope that you’re able to rebuild what you had with him into something better, like I know you’re trying with your mother._

_I hope that you won’t be afraid to listen to us all when we say we love you and we think your politics are stupid and you should change them._

_Because you should._

_I’ll keep telling you that._

_Just like I’ll keep telling you that I love you, telling you how glad I am that you’re alive, that you’re safe, and well, and that you put yourself between me and a blast._

_I’ll never forget that._

_Not as long as I live. _

_And god I’d never have forgiven you for it if you’d died._

She closes the notebook again. She brushes some of his hair out of his face and he stirs, an eye opening. He smiles, then closes his eyes again, and Rey stares out of the windows of the chopper at the country sweeping away beneath them.

-

“Seriously, I’m going to be fine,” Ben tells her after he’s fully installed at the hospital. “Go home. Take a bath. Rest. Come visit me when you’re done.”

“I’ll be back,” she promises him more tearfully than she expects and he grabs her hand.

“I’m ok,” he says again, more seriously.

She takes a long shower and curls up in their bed, pressing her face into his pillow. They’d changed the sheets since she and Ben had been gone but she smells a little bit of him. It’s enough for her to feel at ease, even if she’s in the bed alone.

It’s strange.

She used to sleep on her own all the time. Now…now it’s strange not to have him there, warm and solid, his foot against her ankle or even just a pinky brushing her side. If he wasn’t wrapping himself completely around her.

_It’s not for forever, _she tells herself. The thought of what it would be like if it were crushes her and she sobs herself to sleep, clutching his pillow.

-

She’s up before dawn the next day, showering, dressing in clean clothes, and stuffing a simple breakfast into her face before going to the hospital with Zorri and two other guards.

She can’t tell if she’s surprised or not that Ben is already awake when she gets there. She _is _surprised to see Mitaka there, as well as a few other staffers.

They all look over at her when she comes into the room. “I’m sorry,” Mitaka says gently. “Would you give us a minute?”

Rey nods and removes herself out into the hallway. That’s when she notices that Tysrich is one of the two guards standing outside of Ben’s room. “I’d have thought they’d have given you a day off,” she says.

Tysrich smiles. “No ma’am.”

“Thank you,” Rey says. “From the bottom of my heart.”

He nods and gives her a smile.

Ten minutes later, the door opens and the staff files out. “Thanks for waiting,” Mitaka says quietly. “There were some urgent things to work out. He’s gonna be in here for a while.”

Rey’s heart lurches at that, but she nods and goes into the room. Ben’s lying in his bed, watching the door, waiting for her, and he smiles the moment she appears. His scruff from the day before is turning into a full-on beard.

“Scratchy,” she tells him, when the hairs prickle at her face as she kisses him.

“Too much?” he asks her. “I’ve been too lazy to ask for a razor.”

“It’s fine,” she shrugs. “But I think I like you smooth better.” He nods. “That meeting ok?”

“Yeah, it was working out what the flow of work is going to be while I’m in here. The doctors are saying it’ll be three to four weeks if I recover at pace, but maybe longer.”

“What’s the plan?” she asks him.

Ben looks at her.

“I’ll get briefings three times a day, and hope to god nothing happens in the middle of the night because they won’t let people in to see me in the middle of the night.” He smiles at her. “No smuggling you in, unfortunately.”

“I was going to ask,” Rey says quietly. “I missed you last night. And I thought maybe I could spend some nights here.”

His eyes soften and he shakes his head. “Three to four weeks. Then I’ll be back to you.”

“And I’ll visit every day,” she promises.

Ben takes a long slow breath. “Don’t put things on hold over me. I’m safe and sound. I’m going to get better as fast as I can.” He says it firmly.

“I want to be here with you,” Rey protests.

“Yeah, but—”

“I’m coming to visit you. I want to visit you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he says.

“What do you mean then?”

“I mean,” he says slowly, “You’ll have things to do, and people to see. Just like you would if I wasn’t in here. You were starting to have a busier schedule. And something tells me you’ll be more in demand with me out of commission for a few weeks. Do those things. See those people. Tell me about it afterwards. Don’t put them off because I’m here. I’ll be out soon and I want you to live your life, and get back to normal and—”

Rey blinks. Her eyes feel very dry and it stings more than she wants it to.

“And if you’re free,” Ben continues, “Come visit me. I will always want to see you. I never don’t want to see you.”

And she gets it. She gets what he’s trying to say—that conversation the night after he’d frightened her. It feels so far away, it feels almost like it shouldn’t be applicable anymore. But it is.

“Ok,” she says. “I’ll get my bearings and...and proceed accordingly.”

He brings her lips down to hers and kisses her.

“Funny,” he mutters. “I said I wanted some time to slow things down, think a bit about how to handle everything. I have so much to think about. Jakku…” And his voice trails away, his eyes get a bit cloudy, distant, and Rey holds her breath. “I’ve got a lot to think about,” he says and there’s a significance there now that makes hope uncurl itself in her belly. Anyway—” He gives her a firm smile, “I wanted time, but didn’t really expect to get it, did I? And yet here I am.”

“If you ever need it again, please don’t step in front of a blast.”

“Just for you,” he says and kisses her again with a sigh.

-

It’s a strange normal. Rey gets used to sleeping on her own again. She continues to have meetings with various people and organizations trying to get a better sense of what sorts of changes could even be made to the foster system. And Ben was right—she _was_ in more demand now that he was out of commission for a few weeks. But far from feeling overwhelmed, she feels like she stands taller whenever a reporter asks her a question. She feels not quite at ease at the events that she’s invited to, but certainly nowhere near as close to anxious as she’d been at that fundraiser. Oddly without Ben there at her side, she has to ground herself more fully in her own experience in Coruscant, but she knows that she’s not alone. Even if he’s not there, he’s supporting her; his staff is supporting her; the _country _is supporting her as she learns five days after the shooting when someone accidentally mentions that her popularity polling has skyrocketed into the upper eighties—higher than Ben’s could dream of being. And even if all that weren’t true, it was like she’d remembered what it was to have survived Jakku by going back there. She thought she’d remembered, but maybe being dragged out of there and thrown in the deep end hadn’t really allowed her to take ownership of this change and what she’d been before. 

“Does this mean I can do whatever I want?” she asks Mitaka, mostly to try and get the man to smile. He looks like he’s aged eighty years in a week.

“Probably,” he replies. “So long as you don’t kill someone, or kick a puppy or something.” She opens her mouth but he interrupts her, “For the love of god, please don’t weigh in on the health care vote.”

But he doesn’t berate her when a quote from her office makes its way into the Coruscant Daily Mirror stating that the President is benefitting from the best health care in the world, and that this country is blessed with incredible medical professionals and everyone should have access based on need, not means.

She volunteers twice a week in the after school hours. She writes letters to Ben in her notebook and visits him either in the morning after his first briefing, or in the evening before he goes to sleep.

He is adamant that she not visit him more than once a day, and only from Ben does it not feel as though he’s pushing her away. It feels like he’s pushing her towards something. Herself, maybe.

“Luke’s come to see me a few times,” Ben tells her at the end of the second week.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d that go?”

“Not...great,” Ben says. “At least the first one. The second one went better. It gave me an idea.”

“What was that?”

Ben swallows and looks at her.

“Don’t tell anyone yet,” he says. “Because I’m not even sure it’s going to happen. It’ll depend how the health care vote goes, because god knows the Party of the Republic is taking as much advantage as they can in every avenue that I got shot.” He gives her a look and she knows without him having to say anything that he saw her quote in the Daily Mirror. He looks proud of her, not annoyed, which strikes her as more than a little odd until he takes a deep breath and says, “But I’m thinking of leaving the party. Both parties. Not having a party.”

Rey feels her eyes go wide.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know a lot about politics but that feels a little…”

He smiles at her. “It is definitely a little. More than a little. It’s a lot. No president’s ever done it before.”

“Why?” she asks him. “You’ve always been so...determined that you’re right?”

He gives her a wry smile. “It’s not a matter of me changing what I want, but I need Snoke out of my head. And he’s in everyone’s heads in that party and I’m done with it. I can’t be in charge if I feel like I report to someone else. I can’t make the lasting change I want if I also can’t work with the majority party, which increasingly what Snoke wants. And there _is_ work that needs to be done and keeps not getting done because both sides are too entrenched. So maybe I can break the entrenchments a bit. Try and get people to actually talk instead of just bloviating back and forth until the next election while places like Jakku suffer.”

Rey swallows. Swallows, and doesn’t say a word. She just takes his hand, and squeezes it and knows that in that squeeze, there’s every word that she doesn’t know how to say, every tear she’s blinking back.

Ben watches her. He always watches her. He watches out for her, watches over her—and she does the same for him. 

“I don’t know,” he continues at last, his hand still holding hers tightly. _I’m afraid, _his grip tells her, _but less afraid because you’re here, _“the idealist in me says that there shouldn’t be a President of one party or another. How can you be in charge of a whole country if you’re so tied down? President Revan even warned against political parties in his farewell address. Something about how people will use them to rip the country apart. You’re going to only listen to people who agree with you and...sometimes people disagree because they care too.” He looks at Rey. “Sometimes they care a lot. Doesn’t make them right, but they care.”

Rey doesn’t know what to say to that. She thinks it’s about as close to a compromise as he’s willing to make right now. Probably the only one he _could_ make and still feel like everything he’s thought isn’t just a lie. “Can’t change the rules, so you play a different game,” Rey says at last.

He shrugs. “Let the past die. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and just because _that’s how every President since Revan has done it_ doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing for me.” He grins. “Besides—I want to see what OpEd Luke writes about _that_ one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NO TROS SPOILERS: that's it that's the fic, all that remains is a smutty epilogue which I hope to post before too too long! Thanks so much for reading. I know I've really sucked at replying to reviews and I just want you to know that the support I've gotten on this fic has really made the last few months bearable. It's been a rough time personally, and one of the things I love about fandom is that we help each other through shit.
> 
> TROS SPOILERS: what the fuck was that movie tho? What a fucking mess. I hope folks are [doing ok and taking care of themselves](https://twitter.com/crossing_winter/status/1208769663540301824) and remember: you're not alone. Obviously we can't change what's been done, but that's what fic is for and that's what fandom is for—to be there for and with one another.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...got distracted from writing this half-written pre-TROS epilogue this past week. I hope you'll forgive the delay on it but here it is--the last installment, featuring a good boi sweater and mostly just porn. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading this. The last few months--independently of Fandom--have been an emotional journey that I won't go into here, but it feels Fitting to be posting this today. You all mean the universe and a half and I'm so glad you've enjoyed this.

Rey’s volunteering when Tenel strolls up to her. 

“I have a text message for you,” she says and Rey raises her eyebrows. 

“No mobilecoms with the kids,” Rey tells her firmly. It's one of the rules the organization cares most about. Undivided attention—always. 

“You’ll want this one,” Tenel tells her.

“Oh?”

“Yes, because I very much didn’t want to have to read it with my own two eyes, because I’ve known him since I was four.”

Rey raises her eyebrows and excuses herself to the bathroom with Tenel’s mobilecom.

_ The doctor says we can have sex now. _

She almost chokes in the bathroom stall.

“Ben,” she mutters aloud, shaking her head. 

_ I’m volunteering. And you traumatized Tenel. And probably whoever’s mobilecom you’re borrowing. _

Because Ben doesn’t have a mobilecom. Neither does she, though she’s thinking about getting one when Rose and Finn get to Coruscant and she actually wants to go out and do things with them. Although she doesn’t look forward to having to convince anyone that she might actually need one. But if it’s a matter of receiving sexts on one of her staffer’s coms…

_ Get back here,  _ is the only response and Rey shakes her head. 

“I’m sorry about that,” she says, handing Tenel the com.

“I feel worse for Mitaka. If he ever gets audited, how’s he going to explain  _ that  _ one? The President made me do it?”

Rey laughs and settles back down with the kids. She has another hour of volunteering. 

A few minutes later, Tenel is tapping her on the shoulder again, her mobilecom pressed to her shoulder. “He wants to know where you are.”

“Tell him I’m volunteering until 6:30.”

“And end up dead? Fat chance.”

Rey gets to her feet again and takes Tenel’s com from her. “Ben, I have volunteering,” she tells him.

“Yes, and I’m—”

“And you’re the one who told me that I should prioritize my things.”

“I think we can both agree that this thing is actually yours and not mine.”

“You can do better than that,” she tells him, rolling her eyes.

“It’s been four months, Rey. I can’t even remember what I can and can’t do.”

“Well, I’ll be home this evening to remind you. Give poor Mitaka back his phone.”

She hangs up and returns to the kids, smiling. Something tells her Ben’s going to  _ pounce _ when she gets home and she can’t say she isn’t thoroughly delighted by the prospect.

It’s been a long few months. Not horrible. They’d cuddled a lot, especially when he came back from the hospital. But cuddling and kissing and having to stop kissing because if they progressed too far he ran the risk of his recovery taking longer… well, she’d hated that. She’d hated that more than she could articulate, but at least she could fall asleep every night with her head resting on his chest, with her arms wrapped around him, with his breath tickling her skin. That had been better than the nights alone. And far better than the nights she might have spent alone if—

But no. No, he’s alive. He’s alive and the doctors say that they can do a little more than cuddle, and she  _ likes _ cuddling, she really does, but he’s right: it has been four months. 

It has indeed been four months.

But no—she needs to get that thought out of her head right now. She is not going to think about that when she still has an hour left, and  _ certainly _ not if she’s going to tease Ben for his impatience.  _ It’s been so long though. _ Her heart beats a little faster than before.

There’s a slight swing to her hips as she gets out of the transport two hours later. She makes her way through the West Wing to the outer office.

“He in there?” she asks, nodding to the closed door to the Hexagonal Office.

“He’s with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Artoo replies. “Shall we let him know you’re out here?”

“I think he’d appreciate that,” Rey says, leaning against the desk. She tries to look as casual as she can. Somehow, she gets the impression that if there’s anyone who can pinpoint a  _ we’re about to have sex  _ from a casual glance, it would be Artoo Deetoo.

Thanisson goes into the office and a moment later, Phasma strolls out along with several others, all of whom are followed by Ben. Ben, who is wearing a sweater she’d gotten him for his birthday and whose eyes are on Rey, burning in a way she hasn’t seen them burn for months. Her mouth goes dry and her heart lurches in her chest.

“Good evening, Mr. President,” Artoo says happily.

“Good evening, Artoo,” he replies, not taking his eyes off Rey.

“Is there anything—”

“Go away now,” he says firmly. Rey bites back a smile.

“You seem a little tense right now,” says Artoo a little tartly. Oh, he definitely knows what’s happening. He’s definitely giving Ben shit.

But Ben barely even seems to notice. “Oh, not for long, Artoo. Why don’t you come inside?” he says, directing the question to Rey.

“I was going to shower. Up in the Residence.”

“That seems unnecessarily far away,” he points out.

“Not for a shower.”

“I don’t think you need a shower.”

And Rey can’t help that her smile is catlike as she turns away from him and takes a step towards the hallway. “What do you think I need?”

He’s barely a breath behind her all the way to the elevator up to the Residence and the moment they’re inside it, he’s pressing her against the wall, his groin already stiffening against her.

“Giving security a show, I see?” she murmurs as he sucks on her neck.

“They’ve probably seen worse at some of the parties we host,” he growls. 

“The nation’s tax dollars, hard at work.”

“I’ll give you hard at work.”

“Will you now?” She nudges her hips against his, and yes—yes she can feel him already starting to get stiff as his hands bypass her hips and settle firmly on her ass, squeezing her muscles and pulling her close as he drags the skin of her neck lightly between her teeth and sucks. 

“I think so,” he says and she can’t remember the last time she’d heard his voice that low in his chest. She really can’t remember. 

They make their way through the Residence, moving faster and faster as they approach their bedroom. Rey’s breathless, giddy, giggling as Ben pushes the door open then pushes her through it, and before long they are tumbling onto the bed, kicking off shoes as they kiss one another.

She cups his face between her hands as she worries at his lower lip with her teeth. She licks at it, sucks on it until she knows the skin around it will be red.

“Tell me you don’t have anything else tonight,” she whispers into his mouth. “Tell me it’s just us now.”

“It’s just us now,” he tells her. “I promise.”

“Good,” she replies and her tongue is in his mouth, tracing the rough roof of it, twining with his as his hands fist in her hair. 

_ Just us.  _ An evening with Ben. She doesn’t get those much. 

So she’s going to savor this. She’s going to savor him and the way his hands are already sliding up the front of her shirt to cup her breasts, the way he is pushing her onto her back because she knows he wants to own every second of this. He’s waited so long for it.

_ I have too. _

How long had they waited for one another? Every second they aren’t kissing, aren’t touching one another—it feels cruel. It feels like the fates are mocking them.

He sits up to pull his sweater off, but it gets stuck over his head—his arms fumbling with the wool as Rey begins to undo his tie and button-down. “Help,” he mutters after a good twenty seconds lost in the dark weave. Rey laughs and turns her attention to his neck—exposed now under the wool. She sucks on his pulse, nipping, knowing that his skin’s going to go dark from it and he’ll have to fuss with his collar tomorrow to make sure no one can see her handiwork.

“You’re not helping,” he points out. His arms are at a ridiculous angle and his head is still completely covered.

“I think I am,” she murmurs.

“I sincerely beg to differ.”

“Do you now?” and she lets her hand graze the tenting at the front of his slacks.

He lets out a grunt and starts trying to tug the sweater off again. “At some point you’re going to take pity on me,” he tells her. 

“That’s possible,” she replies and she takes his hips in her hands and pushes him back down to the mattress. “But it’s more likely that I’m going to take advantage of you like this.”

“I want to look at you,” he whines as she straddles his hips and finishes undoing his shirt. 

“You’ll get to.”

“And how do you propose getting my undershirt off?” he asks as she begins to tug it up his chest.

She pauses. “I suppose I don’t need it all the way off,” she says after a moment of false-consideration. “Like how you don’t always need my bra off, you just pop my tits out.”

He sputters and she bends down and bites his nipple lightly. He’s not as muscled as he had been because his exercise routine had changed drastically in the past few months. But there’s something so beautifully human about seeing the way the skin isn’t taught over his chest anymore, the way the neat scar cuts across his torso, the way she can see his stomach trembling in anticipation as she traces her fingers across his skin. 

“I’ll get you out of it,” she promises him and she hears his breath hitch. 

“But,” he prompts, hearing the turn she hasn’t voiced yet.

“But I want you like this for just a little bit. I have a plan.”

“A plan?”

“A plan.”

“Because for the past few months, I seem to remember telling you things I was going to do to you, but you never once said—”

“And yet who’s the one stuck in a sweater unable to see?”

“Did you plan this?” he asks and she knows he’s joking.

“No, but I’m definitely taking advantage of it.” She leans down and kisses the skin just above his belly button. “Can I?”

“I don’t even know  _ what _ you’re talking about,” he points out dryly.

“Do you trust me?”

“With my life.” He probably meant it as mostly a joke, but a lump lodges in her throat all the same as she kisses him. Then she clambers off the bed.

It had been silly, trying to get this without anyone knowing. It had involved Rose and a series of ‘things Rey had forgotten to bring with her in the wake of the shooting,’ despite the fact that Finn and Rose had made sure to send her the things that they’d collected for her weeks before. But how else was she supposed to get this? Especially when reporters were hunting for any story they could find about her and Ben these days, in the wake of his decision to leave his party. The very last thing she wanted was for some tabloid to find this and this—this would be a whole different news story than if people found out Thanisson had gotten them condoms once.

Because it’s a plug. A small one—he hasn’t tried it before. But the very last thing that he needs—right when the media can’t decide if he’s a coward for leaving his party or braver than any president before him—is for the nation to learn that, one night, he had mentioned casually in passing that he was curious about anal. Because god only knew Rey didn’t think any the less of him for it, but if there was one thing she’d noticed since coming to Coruscant, it was how quickly those who claimed to be progressive could become absolutely regressive if Ben didn’t behave exactly the way they wanted him to.

She finds the little bottle of lube, and the plug, and returns to the bed, dropping both on the bedspread underneath him. She smiles at him for a moment. He absolutely could have gotten himself out of this sweater by now. But no, he’s lying there, waiting for her, his breath probably overheating the wool because she’d asked him to.

She unzips his slacks and pulls them and his underwear down his legs. She takes off his shoes for him, presses a kiss to each ankle, and then tucks his knees up so that his cock bobs against his belly. She watches his stomach hitch at the contact. Then she squeezes some of the lube onto her fingers and—

He lets out a long, low hiss as she begins to circle lube around his hole. “This ok?” she asks him.

“I love you,” he replies and Rey grins. She continues circling lightly, probing carefully with a finger. 

“If any of this is too much,” she begins, but he cuts her off.

“Can I please watch. Please?”

She presses a kiss to his knee. “Yes,” she says. And off comes the sweater, because of course he’d figured out what he needed to do. He tugs his undershirt off as well and lies back against the pillows. She can see the remnants of her kisses in the puffiness of his lips, in the flush of his neck as she keeps pressing her fingers into him. 

“How are you still dressed?” he asks her.

“Because you were beaten by a sweater.”

He snorts, and Rey presses another kiss to his knee. She presses a second finger against him and he hisses. “Too much?” she asks sharply.

“I love you,” he repeats.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Take off your shirt.”

“That’s also not an answer.”

“Please let me see your tits.”

“Do I need you to put the sweater back on?”

He laughs and sits up and it’s a bit awkward, the way he’s sort of leaning between his own legs, his dick riding up his stomach, but he pulls her face to his and kisses her, long and lingering. And it’s cheating—it’s definitely cheating—the way he’s distracting her with those perfect lips of his, but he’s already unbuttoning her blouse and shoving it off her shoulders and she finds she can’t care. Though she does laugh when—since he can’t get the shirt off her arms since she’s fingering his asshole and thus he definitely can’t get her bra off—he pops her tits right out of the cups. 

Then he lies back down, smirking at her and god—what a sight he is like that, his arms up behind his head, his dick thick and long against his stomach, bobbing as he breathes unsteadily. “Perfect,” he whispers.

By the time she’s gotten him stretched enough to try pressing the toy inside him, he’s whimpering and flushed. And when the silicone is settled inside him, his breathing is ragged, his eyes are glassy and he is looking at her like the world doesn’t exist beyond just the two of them.

“What now?” he asks her quietly as she shrugs off her shirt and unclasps her bra. She gets off the bed as well and shoves the jeans she wears when she volunteers down her legs before clambering back on the bed. 

She has half a mind to straddle him, to slide onto him and ride him for what she anticipates won’t be their longest session ever because it’s been four months. 

But instead she lies down between his legs, kissing along his thighs until she’s got her lips pressed to where his balls meet the bottom of his shaft. Then she licks, little tiny laps that make him writhe on the bed, which in turn makes him groan because writhing presses the plug a little deeper into him. 

“Rey,” he groans and she looks up. He’s leaking already, and she hasn’t even reached the tip of him. She’s been taking her time with the hot, soft skin of his shaft. No rush, just enjoying herself. Because they have all the time in the world tonight. Except Ben is just about as close as she’d thought he would be. 

Without breaking eye contact, she finishes licking his shaft and sucks him fully into her mouth. He chokes out her name and comes hard, his mouth open, his eyes closed, his fingers twitching towards her as she drinks him dry.

He lies there for a long moment, his whole body limp, his dick slowly going soft in her mouth. She releases it, and kisses the inside of his thigh again before clambering up the bed and cuddling against his side.

“I had plans,” he half complains.

“I have you the whole night,” she replies. “What on earth makes you think these plans won’t come to fruition?”

His fingertips run up and down her arm, grazing the side of her breast slightly. “I do have the whole night,” he says and his eyes as he looks at her—

She’ll never be over it, seeing her eyes spiking their way through his, the way his deep brown and her lighter hazel dance together. His gaze is so very soft as he looks at her, his expression peaceful. She loves it when he looks peaceful. 

He pulls her lips to his, and the urgency with which he’d chased her up to their bedroom is gone now. He’s kissing her like he has all the time in the world because he does. He pulls her into his arms, pulls her across his chest as his tongue traces her lower lip, then her upper lip, then her lower lip again. His fingertips trail up and down her legs, her back, her arms, her neck—the lightest touches send hot shivers across her skin and she becomes increasingly and acutely aware of how turned on she is. 

She adjusts her hips, widens them so she can feel his abdomen brushing against her cunt as she begins to rock back and forth. She doesn’t expect to come—not exactly. But she wants her blood to rush through her, wants to be whimpering and wanting by the time he’s ready again because she knows—she knows he’ll be so good to her.

“What was your plan?” she asks at last. 

“Mostly fucking you into the matress,” he says. “Hadn’t landed on a position because I honestly wasn’t fussed about that so long as my dick was in you.”

“That doesn’t sound like a particularly well-architected plan,” she points out.

“It was a vision. I had a vision. The methods of getting there were negotiable.”

“Again, this doesn’t sound like a plan.”

“Always with the structural critique,” he muses, pressing a kiss to her nose. 

“Also I worry about you fucking me into the mattress,” Rey says and his eyebrows shoot up.

“You think I can’t anymore?” He sounds stung. More stung than she wants him to because that was not what she’d meant.

“The stamina’ll come—”

“Ok,” he cuts her off, rolling his eyes.

“It wasn’t what I meant, will you let me finish?” she asks and he nods slowly, his jaw tight. 

“Well?” he asks her when she doesn’t speak right away.

“I just—I wouldn’t want you to—” she rolls her eyes. “Stop it.”

“You wouldn’t want me to hurt myself?” he asks dryly.

“I mean it caringly.”

“I’ve been waiting to fuck you for months. At this point I do not care if I hurt myself.”

“ _ I  _ care if you hurt yourself—“

“—And I’m not going to hurt myself because on a spectrum to pulling a muscle fucking and getting shot, one of them is not going to kill me.”

And his lips are at her throat and he’s rolling her onto her back and she knows that’s it. Because yes, it’ll take him another few minutes to really get aroused, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s kissing her neck, her sternum, sucking her whole breast into his mouth and god his lips are obscene when he does that. His fingers are between her legs, stroking, stroking, probing and she’s falling apart with a cry because she hadn’t expected it to happen so fast—falling apart like that. He’s hovering over her, smirking down at her and he doesn’t have to say it for her to see that twinkle in his eyes that says  _ you’re not lasting very long right now either.  _

She lifts her head to peck his cheek before settling back on the mattress. 

She expects him to cuddle down next to her, content in his ministrations, ready to wait out his refractory period together. But he doesn’t lie down next to her. He gets off the bed and goes into the bathroom for a short moment. She hears him let out a sigh, hears him run the sink. Then he returns to the bedroom, looking down at her for a few seconds before climbing onto the bed again. As he crawls over her, she catches a glimpse of his ass. He’s taken the plug out.

“Done already?” she asks him, running her fingers down his crack.

“No,” he says. “And also yes.”

“Was it uncomfortable?”

“No, it was good. It just wasn’t what I wanted right now.” And he shrugs and pulls her into his arms and she sighs.

She feels so warm, and safe, and she reaches a hand up to stroke his cheek. She kisses him and kisses him, and kisses him. Lazy and sweet, soft and slow until they’re not anymore, until they’re hot, and needy and his hands cupping her breasts, hers gripping his ass, their breath hot against each other’s skin as they roll across the bed and she feels him getting harder again. 

Harder, and more insistent than he usually is as he rolls her onto her stomach and spreads her legs, lifting her hips just enough so he can enter her from behind. She moans and presses her face, her chest, her hands into the bed beneath her as she bucks her hips up and back—wanting him, needing him to push deeper and faster. There’s something about him fucking her from behind. She feels him more this way. Especially now as his breath is hot on the back of her neck, as his hands press into the bed next to hers and she finds her fingers dancing towards his, gripping his wrists, holding onto him, never wanting to let him go.

_ He’s alive _ . It hits her fresh. It shouldn’t be hitting her now, months later, but it does as she comes apart for the second time, her body trembling and warm and glowy and covered by him as his hips buck against her ass, faster and faster. He’s lasting so much longer than he had before. 

He’s lasting and his hand is now pressing into the small of her back, holding her steady, keeping her grounded and she arches her back up to look at him. His eyes are hooded as he looks at her, and there’s something proud and hopeful in his face when she locks her gaze to his.

And that’s when he falls apart, a groan ripping out of his throat as he lets himself fall forward, crushing her into the bed as he goes very still, and it’s just the two of them, breathing in the darkness, high on one another, radiating joy and relief and pleasure through each other.

She doesn’t know when he curls them onto their sides, his knees under hers, his chest flush to her back. He keeps rubbing his nose back and forth against the nape of her neck and she reaches a hand up to trace the shell of his ear. 

“So Mr. President,” she says quietly, “I’d say you nailed that plan pretty well.”

“I’d say so,” he agrees and she can hear the smile in his voice, can feel it when his lips brush against her neck.

“Would you say it’s plans like these that make you so effective in office?”

“Oh shut up,” he huffs.

And she grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> selunchen is a sweetie who drew art of Ben in his sweater [[x](https://twitter.com/selunchen/status/1213490970085515266) [x](https://twitter.com/crossing_winter/status/1214016542666641409)]

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! you can find me [here](https://linktr.ee/crossingwinter)!


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